commercial
School and education cleaning
School cleaning costs £18 to £26 an hour on a term-time contract, which puts a typical primary school somewhere between £18,000 and £40,000 a year, with holiday deep cleans quoted separately at £1,500 to £6,000. The staffing is what makes it a different trade: the level of DBS check follows what the role involves, and the school wants the same faces every day either way.
What this covers
What it costs. School cleaning costs £18 to £26 an hour on a term-time contract. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Classrooms, halls and corridors cleaned after the school day
- Toilets and washrooms, checked during the day as well
- Dining halls turned round between sittings and after service
- Deep cleans and floor work in the holidays
- DBS checked staff at the level the role calls for, with a single named team
What is involved
The calendar governs everything. Thirty-nine weeks of the year the building is in use and cleaning happens in the ninety minutes after the last bell; the other thirteen it is empty and the work that cannot be done in term time gets done. Floor stripping and sealing, carpet extraction, high-level dusting and anything needing a room emptied all belong to the holidays, and a contract priced without them is a contract that will not survive a summer.
Safeguarding shapes the staffing, and the level of check follows the role rather than the building. Cleaning unsupervised around pupils often enough to meet the frequency test is regulated activity, and that is the work an enhanced check with a children's barred list check covers. A cleaner working after the last bell with no contact is usually not in regulated activity, and asking for a barred list check on that role is not simply cautious, it is not permitted. What narrows the labour pool is the school wanting a settled team it has checked rather than rotating agency cover. It is also why schools care so much about turnover: a new face every fortnight is a safeguarding administrative burden as well as a quality problem.
Toilets are the daily flashpoint and the one thing a purely after-school contract gets wrong. Primary school washrooms need looking at in the middle of the day, which means a lunchtime presence rather than an evening one, and that is a separate line in the specification.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask which roles the school treats as regulated activity and what level of check each one therefore needs, then ask how cover is handled when somebody is off. Cover is where this usually falls down, and a substitute at the wrong check level cannot simply be sent.
Ask what is in the holiday programme and what it costs. A term-time price with no holiday schedule attached is half a quote.
Ask about a lunchtime washroom check. An after-school contract alone leaves primary toilets unattended for the whole day.
Common questions
Why does it cost more per hour than an office?
Because of who can do it. Checks take time to obtain and cannot be transferred between employers at will, schools want a settled team rather than rotating cover, and term-time-only hours are harder to staff than a full year. All three raise the rate.
What happens in the holidays?
The work that cannot happen in term time: floors stripped and sealed, carpets extracted, high-level dusting, rooms emptied and done properly. It is quoted separately and it is not optional if the floors are to last.