A Reading Platform Where Students Co-Write Books With Real Authors Wins Castilla y León's School Contract

Standfirst

The Regional Ministry of Education of Castilla y León has awarded a EUR 192 306 contract to Fiction Express Education SL to run a digital reading and writing platform across all public primary, secondary and upper secondary schools in the region for the next two school years. The platform lets students collaboratively shape stories alongside professional authors and the tender drew only one bid.

Introduction

Getting children excited about reading is one of education's perennial challenges and Spain's Castilla y León region has spent several school years now backing a specific digital answer: a platform where students don't just read books, they help write them, voting and contributing alongside a professional author as a story unfolds in real time.

The region's education ministry has just renewed that commitment for the 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 school years, awarding the contract to Fiction Express Education SL, a Barcelona based company, in a tender that attracted exactly one bid.

Why This Contract Matters

The Consejería de Educación frames this contract as central to its Reading Plan, whose stated goal is to foster reading habits and reading comprehension across different formats and text types, alongside writing and oral communication skills, supporting what the region calls media and information literacy for today's knowledge society. Because the education department lacks the in-house staff and resources to build and run this kind of platform itself, it turns to the market for a ready-made solution each contract cycle.

The specific model matters too: rather than a static digital library, the platform is built around co-creation, where an author and a class of student readers jointly shape a literary work, with the finished digital books then joining a permanent online reference library available to future students. That structure is designed to make reading feel participatory rather than passive.

Contract Timeline

• Winner selected: 23 July 2026
• Contract concluded: 24 August 2026
• Notice dispatched to the Publications Office: 25 August 2026
• Published in the Official Journal, OJ S 164/2026: 26 August 2026
• Service period: school years 2026-2027 and 2027-2028

Contract Overview

The Consejería de Educación ran an open procedure for a digital reading and writing service delivered through a customised, Software as a Service platform, giving students and teachers at public primary, secondary and upper secondary schools across Castilla y León access to digital content designed around collaborative storytelling between authors and student readers. Only one tender was submitted, from Fiction Express Education SL, which was awarded the contract at EUR 192 306, matching the notice's total value exactly.

Key Contract Details

Project Scope

The service gives students and teachers at Castilla y León's public primary, secondary and bachillerato schools access to a personalised web platform where an author and a class of student readers collaboratively create a literary work together. The award criteria set concrete minimum standards for that experience: at least 20 activities per book to reinforce comprehension and engagement and at least 21 jointly created books available per school year, alongside a dedicated module letting teachers track student participation and progress. Every digital book created through the platform becomes part of a permanent, searchable online reference library available to students in future years.

About the Contracting Authority

The Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León is the regional government department responsible for education policy across Castilla y León, based in Valladolid. Its Directorate General for Educational Innovation and Teacher Training holds specific responsibility for designing and coordinating educational innovation programmes such as the Reading Plan this contract supports.

About the Organisations Involved

Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León

As covered above, the Consejería de Educación is the buyer for this contract, running its own procurement function directly and providing further information to bidders itself.

Tribunal Administrativo de Recursos Contractuales de Castilla y León

The Administrative Tribunal for Contractual Appeals of Castilla y León, based in Zamora, is named as the review organisation, with a standard 15 business day window for special appeals under Spanish public procurement law.

Fiction Express Education SL

Fiction Express Education SL, based in Barcelona and classified as a small or medium enterprise, is the winning supplier. The company's platform is built around live, serialised fiction, where professional authors publish a book in instalments and student readers vote on plot directions and complete linked reading and writing activities, a model that closely matches the specific co-creation and activity based criteria set out in this tender.

Procurement Analysis

The tender was decided on a mixed basis, with price carrying 60 of 100 points and four distinct quality criteria making up the remaining 40, each tied to a specific, measurable feature of the service: the depth of author-reader co-creation, a minimum activity count per book, a minimum number of jointly created books per year and improvements to the teacher facing tracking module. That structure lets a regional buyer assess a genuinely qualitative educational product against concrete, comparable benchmarks rather than relying on vague quality language alone.

Only one tender was received, an outcome consistent with a genuinely specialised service category, live, author led collaborative fiction platforms for schools remain a narrow niche within the broader EdTech market and an incumbent supplier with an established relationship and content pipeline already serving Castilla y León's schools would have a natural advantage in retaining the contract.

Additional Procurement Facts

• This contract is confirmed as not financed with EU funds and as covered by the Government Procurement Agreement.
• The contract carries a declared strategic procurement aim of fulfilling social objectives, specifically accessibility for all and gender equality.
• The winning tender involves no subcontracting.
• Review deadlines would shorten to 10 calendar days had this project been financed through specific EU recovery or structural funds, though it was not.

Market and Industry Perspective

Interactive, author led reading engagement platforms occupy a distinct niche within the broader educational technology market, positioned between traditional digital library services and more general literacy software. Regional and national education authorities across Europe increasingly favour this kind of platform as a way to make reading feel participatory for digital native students and a single, specialised supplier winning uncontested here reflects how concentrated this particular market segment remains.

Economic Significance

At EUR 192 306 for two full school years across every public school in a nine province region, this is a modest but meaningful investment in literacy education, translating to a relatively low per pupil cost for extending reading engagement tools across Castilla y León's entire public school system.

Future Procurement Opportunities

Given the Consejería de Educación's multi-year track record running this kind of reading plan tender, a further recompete is likely once the 2027-2028 school year concludes, offering other EdTech literacy platform providers a future opportunity to compete for this contract.

Opportunities for Suppliers

EdTech companies offering interactive or collaborative reading and writing platforms for schools should note the specific, measurable quality criteria this tender used, activity counts per book, co-created books per year and teacher tracking functionality, as a template for how Spanish regional education authorities are likely to evaluate similar services going forward.

What Businesses Should Watch

• Whether Castilla y León retenders this reading platform service once the current two year contract concludes after the 2027-2028 school year.
• Comparable digital reading and literacy platform tenders from other Spanish autonomous communities.
• Fiction Express's continued expansion across other Spanish and European public education markets.

SpainTenders.com Procurement Intelligence

This contract is a useful example of how public education buyers can structure meaningful quality criteria around a genuinely qualitative product, translating an abstract goal like fostering reading enjoyment into concrete, measurable standards: minimum activity counts, minimum co-created books and teacher facing tracking improvements. Suppliers serving this market should recognise that vague claims about educational value carry less weight than specific, quantifiable commitments a buyer can verify.

The single bid outcome also reflects a broader pattern in specialised EdTech niches: once a supplier establishes a working relationship, content pipeline and track record with a public education buyer, switching costs and the narrowness of qualified alternatives can make recompetes largely uncontested, even under fully open procedures. New entrants hoping to break into this kind of contract should focus on demonstrating a genuinely differentiated pedagogical model well before an incumbent's contract comes up for renewal.

Supplier Takeaways

• Award criteria combined 60 percent price with four specific, measurable quality metrics tied to concrete service features.
• Only one tender was submitted, reflecting the narrow, specialised nature of author led collaborative reading platforms for schools.
• The contract carries explicit social objectives around accessibility and gender equality, worth addressing directly in similar future bids.
• A track record of prior service delivery to the same buyer appears to be a significant advantage in this recurring contract category.
• The contract's modest overall value, spread across an entire region's public school system, reflects an efficient per pupil cost structure worth highlighting to similar prospective buyers.

Key Takeaways

• Castilla y León's education ministry awarded a EUR 192 306 contract to Fiction Express Education SL for a digital reading and writing platform covering all public schools across the region.
• The contract runs for the 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 school years.
• Only one tender was received, from a Barcelona based SME.
• Award criteria combined 60 percent price with quality metrics covering author-reader co-creation, activity counts, co-created books and teacher tracking tools.
• The contract carries declared social objectives of accessibility for all and gender equality.
• The contract is not financed with EU funds and involves no subcontracting.

Conclusion

For two more school years, students across Castilla y León's public schools will have the chance to help shape a story alongside a professional author, one activity, one vote, one chapter at a time. It is a small contract by public spending standards, but for a region trying to make reading feel like something students want to do rather than have to do, it is exactly the kind of investment worth watching.

Source: Tenders Electronic Daily (TED), Contract Award Notice 588778-2026, Official Journal of the European Union, OJ S 164/2026, published on 26 August 2026.