She was invited to deliver a talk to the Education Publishers Conference, which was held at Ironmongers’ Hall, London. She said: ‘I spoke about how publishers need to engage with Multi Academy Trusts to make procurement compliant and easy for schools.’

‘The MAT procurement network comprises 25 MATS and around 500 schools. We are planning to set up a framework for books and resources that education publishers can be part of, for our schools to purchase from.

‘There is some work to do to educate publishers about the requirements for Multi Academy Trusts to comply with public procurement regulations but there is a great opportunity for publishers to work centrally with MATs to drive a joined-up approach.

‘At Brooke Weston Trust we have had some successes with this; with our Trust Directors of Subject using negotiated publisher partnership agreements to access not only deals on print and resources but also tap into added support, training and analytics, to drive success in Teaching and Learning.

‘We want to roll this out to other suppliers, and with a framework in place, we hope that schools and suppliers will benefit from a collaborative approach to deliver cost effective solutions and support teachers and students achieve results.’

Jo spoke to conference delegates for 15 minutes, and the session was followed by a Q&A session: ‘Pearson invited me to speak because I have been working with them on ideas to compliantly deliver the best deals for schools for the MAT network.  It was a very good conference and gave both sides the opportunity to talk about the difficulties of the current procurement situation and discuss ideas to improve working together quite radically.’

To read more about the conference click here.