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NHS England is seeking a supplier to deliver course content for the 2025/2026 pharmacy foundation training year.
An invitation to bid, published on the government’s commercial portal on 18 March 2025, said that foundation trainee pharmacists entering the programme from 2025 are to be offered “course provision to supplement experiential learning in practice, developing trainees against the GPhC [General Pharmaceutical Council] learning outcomes”.
It adds that NHS England is now seeking a supplier — or more than one supplier — to deliver this course across seven regions in England.
From 2025/2026, NHS England is taking responsibility from the GPhC for the management and delivery of the foundation pharmacist training programme.
In addition, from September 2026, all pharmacists successfully completing foundation training will be independent prescribers at the point of registration.
An accreditation event report, published by the GPhC in July 2024, said that “NHS England was involved in two procurement exercises relating to training course provision and the e-portfolio and PIMS [personal information management systems]”.
“The supplier(s) should contextualise their delivered content within relevant professional development frameworks and curricula (including the GPhC learning outcomes and NHS England practice-based assessment strategy), suitable for trainees in all sectors”, the procurement document said.
It said that the chosen supplier or suppliers must develop and deliver a course which includes an induction event, a minimum of six face-to-face workshops and an end-of-year event.
The document also outlines what the course content must include — across six areas — including professionalism related to prescribing, cultural competence and clinical reasoning and decision-making.
The chosen supplier or suppliers will be responsible for developing and delivering the course content, and NHS England will be responsible for “providing data on incoming trainee cohorts and supervisors”.
NHS England will also “monitor all procured activity against the NHS England ‘Education quality framework’”.
It is estimated that just over 3,000 trainees would attend the training in 2025/2026. Once procured, the contract to run the courses will last until 13 August 2028, with the option to be extended by up to 24 months.
A spokesperson for the GPhC said: “The foundation training programme gives trainee pharmacists the chance to develop and demonstrate the skills, knowledge and behaviours expected of pharmacists. It also gives them the opportunity to apply their academic knowledge in real-life situations.
“Training to become a pharmacist in Great Britain involves learning and understanding how to deliver the safe and effective patient-centred care which patients and the public expect from pharmacy professionals. Trainee pharmacists spend a minimum of 52 weeks working with supervisors, and from 2025, the GPhC has accredited statutory education bodies to oversee the delivery of the foundation training.
“All foundation trainee pharmacists are required to meet a set of learning outcomes as outlined on our website, which forms part of the requirements to being able to register as a pharmacist.”
In June 2024, The Pharmaceutical Journal revealed that the number of pharmacy foundation training places available on the national recruitment scheme (Oriel) for 2025/2026 had increased by more than 1,000 on the previous year, with — at that time — 4,102 foundation pharmacy programmes available across England, Scotland and Wales.
