The Department for Education's new small-business spending plan says it has already beaten its 2028 target. Its own published figures show that same measure has fallen for three years running, closing in on the floor it says it has cleared.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In short. The Department for Education published a new small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) action plan on 30 September 2026, setting "a goal for direct spend with SMEs to reach 10% by 2028" [1]. Its Chief Commercial Officer's foreword says that "for the financial year 2025 to 2026 our direct spend exceeded the target" [1]. The plan's own spend table shows the comparable measure fell from 16.3% to 12.8% to 12.3% across the three years it has been published, each year closer to the 10% floor than the last [1]. A separate, longer-running measure in the same table fell to 27.2% in 2025 to 2026, the lowest figure anywhere in the document's own seven-year series, including the year disrupted by the pandemic [1]. Two documented mistakes: four stars.
Every government department now publishes an SME action plan under the Cabinet Office's Procurement Policy Note 001, setting a three-year spend target and reporting progress against it [2]. The Department for Education's edition, reissued on 30 September 2026 and covering 2025 to 2028, is more candid than most about one thing: it prints its own multi-year spend history in full, not just this year's headline figure [1]. That table is also where the department's own success claim runs into its own record.
The claims, tested
| The claim | What the document's own table shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Susan Dawson, DfE Chief Commercial Officer, in the plan's foreword: "We have also set an ambitious target, with a goal for direct spend with SMEs to reach 10% by 2028, for the financial year 2025 to 2026 our direct spend exceeded the target and we hope this increase continues during the next 2 years" [1] | The "Our direct spend with SMEs" table's recalculated figure, the measure structured against the same 10%-by-2028 target, reads 16.30% for 2023 to 2024, 12.8% for 2024 to 2025 and 12.3% for 2025 to 2026 [1] | True that 12.3% clears 10%. Not an increase: the figure has fallen in both years it has existed to be compared, and is 4 points closer to the target than it was two years ago |
| Minister Josh MacAlister's foreword, on the same target: "I have already commissioned forward looking opportunities to be explored, including joined up work across government departments, which should result in achieving more in future years" [1] | Neither foreword mentions that the department's longest-running published measure, direct spend with SMEs as a share of core procurement spend, fell to 27.2% in 2025 to 2026, the lowest reading anywhere in the table's seven years, below even 2020 to 2021's pandemic-affected 29.0% [1] | A seven-year low sits in the same table as two forewords that describe "strong progress" and an "ambitious target... exceeded", with no acknowledgement of the direction either figure is actually moving in |
Start with the number the foreword leans on. The 10%-by-2028 target sits in its own column in the "Our direct spend with SMEs" table, and the column structured to be compared against it, labelled "RE-calculated Direct spend with SMEs %", is the broadest measure the department publishes: total direct spend with SMEs across DfE, Education Estates and its non-departmental public bodies and executive agencies, as a share of total spend across the same wider group [1]. That column only exists for three years: 16.30% in 2023 to 2024, 12.8% in 2024 to 2025, 12.3% in 2025 to 2026. Every one of those three readings clears the 10% target meant for 2028. Every one of them is also lower than the year before it. The Chief Commercial Officer's "we hope this increase continues" describes a direction the department's own three-year run does not show; what continues, on the numbers printed two paragraphs below her foreword, is the decline.
The second figure sits further down the same table and covers a longer span: "Published Direct spend with SMEs %", DfE's core departmental spend only, published every year since 2019 to 2020. It reads 36.30%, 29.00%, 29.20%, 31.90%, 28.89%, 30.5% and, for 2025 to 2026, 27.2% [1]. Every other year in that run, including 2020 to 2021, when supplier markets were disrupted by the pandemic, sits above 27.2%. Nothing in either foreword, nor in the department overview or case-study sections that follow, mentions that this is the lowest figure the department has ever published on this specific measure.
This matters beyond DfE's own page. This site's teardown of Procurement Policy Note 001 found that four major departments checked directly, the Ministry of Defence, HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Transport and the Home Office, had each published only forward-looking SME action plans in 2026, documents setting out future barrier-removal commitments rather than the annual spend-against-target figures the rule requires (see the PPN-001 teardown) [3]. DfE's own action plan is not like that: it carries seven years of actual outturn figures alongside its forward targets. The data the rule asks for does exist, at least at DfE. It is just not the data either foreword chooses to describe.
Credit where due
The plan is unusually transparent by the standard this site has found elsewhere in government SME reporting. DfE prints its full spend history rather than a single flattering year, labels its estimates as estimates (grant spend with SMEs is explicitly flagged as "a conservative estimate, given a 97% entity match rate" [1]), and reports a genuinely strong payment record: 97% of invoices paid within 30 days for October 2025 to March 2026, against a public-sector-wide 30-day requirement [1]. The indirect spend figures for school building work are substantial too: 82% of contract value on the Schools Rebuilding and Free Schools programmes, worth close to £2 billion a year, goes indirectly to SMEs through Tier 1 contractors, and the department's new construction framework, CF25, carries a forward target of up to 90% [1]. None of that is in dispute here. The dispute is narrower: whether "exceeded the target" and "forward looking... achieving more" are honest descriptions of a three-year trend that is, on the department's own numbers, moving the other way.
Two documented mistakes. (1) The Chief Commercial Officer's foreword says DfE's direct spend with SMEs "exceeded the target" in 2025 to 2026 and hopes the "increase continues"; the plan's own table shows the comparable figure fell in both years since it began being published, from 16.3% to 12.8% to 12.3%, narrowing the gap to the 10% target rather than widening it. (2) Neither foreword mentions that the department's longest-running published SME spend measure fell to 27.2% in 2025 to 2026, the lowest figure anywhere in the document's own seven-year series, lower even than the pandemic-affected year. Rated four stars out of five.
Sources
- Department for Education's small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) action plan: 2025 to 2028 (gov.uk, published 30 September 2026)
- Procurement Policy Note 001: SME and VCSE procurement spend targets (gov.uk, published 13 February 2025)
- Central government spend with SMEs (gov.uk collection, Cabinet Office, last updated 15 August 2023)