2022-05-31-accounts

The Education Futures Collaboration Trustees’ Annual Report 1[st] June 2021 – 31[st] May 2022

Charity name: The Education Futures Collaboration Registered charity number: 1157511 Charity’s principal address: c/o Hewitsons, Exchange House 456 Midsummer Boulevard Milton Keynes MK9 2EA Trustees: Prof Marilyn Leask –chair Mr Michael Blamires Mr Jonathan Noakes Mr Stephen Hall

Aims

The Education Futures Collaboration is an education sector developed and managed initiative, providing an e-infrastructure to support education as it transforms into a knowledge focused collaboration and supporting knowledge transfer, collaborative knowledge building and sharing within education sectors in individual countries as well as worldwide.

We aim to professionalise teaching and to support professional judgement with evidence through the creation of a sustainable model for knowledge mobilisation and collaboration using digital tools in the education sector.

Objectives

We define success as increasing numbers of educators, worldwide, using the MESHGuides to support decision making. For a number of subject areas, we have been inundated with expressions of interest.

• Transform the quality of learning and teaching in education by providing accessible relevant research informed professional knowledge.

• Create a joined-up education profession linking pockets of excellence in teaching, research, and evidence-based practice.

• Provide diagnosis and intervention strategies to help educators and students overcome misconceptions and break through barriers to learning threshold concepts.

• Develop models of transformational and translational research in education, using scalable and cost-effective technologies.

Activities

International partnerships - UN Teacher Task Force

The EFC (MESH project) were formally appointed as an NGO to the UN International Teacher Task Force (UN TTF) in 2020. This involves regular meetings with the UN TTF panel, and EFC membership to the thematic sub-groups of this panel.

International partnerships - VSO

EFC/MESH has been working collaboratively with VSO (International Volunteer Services Overseas) on multiple projects this year; including ‘Numeracy for All’; 'Inclusive Education' and ‘Psycho-Social Development’. In addition, VSO & EFC are collaborating on a new project based in Sierra Leone, which explores the use of an education app to support literacy and numeracy development with primary school children.

International partnerships - ICET

EFC/MESH worked with ICET (International Council on Education for Teaching) throughout the year. Activities with ICET include representing the EFC on the ICET executive board - and attended the ICET Annual Board meeting on 20 June 2022, held at Bath Spa University.

Other activities include attending and supporting the ICET 64th World Assembly in which Sarah Younie presented the keynote, which discussed the global knowledge management project MESH, entitled: ‘Reimagining Education for Teachers: Time for transformation’. Other MESH representatives also helped run workshops at this assembly, one on ‘Building a MESHGuide’ and another on ‘Rhizomatic Learning’.

International publications – ICET/MESH Global Report 2021

The ICET/MESH Global Report was published in autumn 2021 and is available on the MESH website. This publication reports on the research that was undertaken during the global webinars on COVID19. Report - ‘Teachers’ Experiences during Covid-19 ‘.

Publications - Ensuring schooling for all in times of crisis - Lessons from Covid-19

The EFC co-chairs have written a book for Routledge; Leask & Younie (2022) Ensuring schooling for all in times of crisis - Lessons from Covid-19, London: Routledge. The evaluation of what worked and what didn’t work for teachers during the pandemic can facilitate global knowledge transfer for education during times of crisis. There are lessons to be learnt that can benefit the sector and enable more effective planning for crisis, whether natural/environmental or human-made, so the sector is better prepared.

Research Project BRIST Project - 2019-2022 (Building a Research Infrastructure for Teachers)

Erasmus is a European grant to help develop global citizens. Academics from the Education Futures Collaboration Charity, working on the MESH project, have joined forces with the University of Hull,

to lead a three-year international project that will develop teachers’ research skills and networking practices.

The researchers have been awarded €354k of European funding for the project, which will develop teachers into teacher-researchers and evidence-informed practitioners through an innovative infrastructure. The budget is allocated for specific actions allocated to different partners in the project.

The funding was awarded through the Erasmus+ programme, which supports international partnerships seeking to enhance education. The Education Futures Collaboration Charity and the University of Hull has been joined with research partners from across Europe, including the Republic of Ireland, Poland, Greece and Spain.

The project is seeking to inform teacher education practice in its partner countries and strategically target stakeholders and policy makers at its external multiplier events.

The resources will also be made freely available across the European Union, after the project’s completion in December 2022; following the granting of an extension to the project that was originally due to finish in August 2022.

MESHGuide Development

One of the main achievements of the EFC is the publishing of MESHGuides. There continues to be much interest in writing for MESH across a range of relevant topics. Much developmental work has been undertaken this year which welcomes new authors and has the potential to secure completed Guides in the future. Statistics show an extremely buoyant picture of MESHGuide use in the last year. 2 new guides were published this year:

• Video-supported collaborative learning. Pieter Seuneke

• Rhizomatic Learning, Christina Preston

There are also more Guides currently in development which should be published throughout the next year.

Communication and Publicity

Several key communication and publicity activities have taken place during the year. They include:

• Successful publicity campaign through Twitter and LinkedIn, with published book chapters and professional journal articles for teachers and lecturers in digital technologies.

• High profile conference keynote speech and presentations by EFC/MESH members.

• Participation in EU-funded research including fieldwork research with schools promoting RISE programme of research-informed school self-evaluation.

• Extensive participation by EFC/MESH members in UN Teachers TaskForce 2030 initiative and relevant thematic groups across a wide range of important aspects of education.

• Looking ahead to the new academic year we are considering MESHMatters, a termly newsletter for keeping members and stakeholders updated with current news.

Website Reach

The main point of access for people is the website. The MESHGuides themselves get the most views with over 300,000 pageviews in the last year. The Philippines is the largest viewer of the guide’s site,

with Germany having an increase on previous years. The main webpage had around 15,000 pageviews. The MESHGuides have seen an increase in views on the previous year.

Further Work

Members of the steering group continue to contribute to education research and development across the world. Some of these activities have been working with a number of VSO countries including Nepal, Kenya, Pakistan, Uganda, and Nigeria. The VSO Psycho social Skills Task group has run online courses for teachers and support staff from more than 16 countries. One course focused on the needs of Kenya teachers supporting girls at risk of exclusion and teachers working in refugee camps. This course has been further developed as a set of resources to support teachers and children in Myanmar who providing education outside of the military run schools in the country. These materials also include resources on the wellbeing of teachers so there is scope for synergy between this and the RISE school informed by the recent INEE report on teacher wellbeing.

EFC Board

The EFC trustees are supported by the EFC board. This group sets and reviews the short-term and long-term strategy. Decisions are normally made on the basis of consensus at board meetings, but the trustees have the ultimate legal responsibility. The name below are the list of current board members and the roles they have on the board:

|Marilyn Leask|Co-chair | STEM rep on UN TTF| |---|---| |Sarah Younie|Co-chair | Rep on UN TT Panel and thematic group for Inclusion| |Jon Audain|Newsletter and social media| |Mike Blamires|Core editorial team on MESHGuides | Badging development| |Linda Delvin|Twitter strategy | Rep on UN TTF – thematic group for school leadership| |Jonathon Doherty|MESHGuide development - Global North | Rep on UN TTF early childhood| |Larissa Mclean Davies|MESHGuide development - Global South| |Stephen Hall|Communications & media lead | Rep on UN TTF School Leadership| |Christina Preston|Press lead| |Richard Procter|MESHGuides Website and software development Officer| |Matt Scase|Finance Officer| |Chris Shelton|Teacher education lead | STEM rep on UN TTF| |Kate Reynolds|Guest Partner|

Next Steps

Our major challenges for the next few years are filling the gaps and managing the financial burden of expansion of use – editorial and web hosting costs increase with usage.

The next stage of development then, is necessarily focused on establishing sustainable funding and a number of models are relevant. A major challenge is that we wish to keep resources open to all at the point of use. National subscriptions which provide access to all teachers, parents and learners are the most obvious solution to this challenge.

Public Benefit Statement

The Trustees confirm that they have referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission's general guidance on public benefit when reviewing the charity's aims and objectives and in planning future activities. The trustees refer to public benefit throughout this report.

Our charity was set up to benefit the general public and in particular education professionals and students. The organisation's purpose is beneficial as is aims to advance the standards of education and in particular, teaching, learning, research and collaboration amongst education professionals. The trustees are not aware of any detriment or harm which might result from the organisation’s purpose. The charity has a Conflict of Interest Register, which is updated at every Management Meeting and Meeting of Trustees.

Financial Review

It has been agreed to keep one year’s worth of regular expenditure in reserve. This is to cover costs of such things like web hosting, tech support and the finance role. Therefore, it is agreed the reserves should be kept at £2,000.

On top of our reserve policy, it is agreed to make sure we carry enough money to be able to support the running of the website, hosting the MESHGuides, for a least the next five years.

	Annual accounts for the financial year 1stJune 2021 – 31stMay 2022 Receipts and payment account Prepared by Matt Scase 1stJune 2022
	Opening Balance 1st June 2021 £20,500.15
	Receipts EFC Brist Project £18,178.78 Founder Member Contribution £2,000.00 BATOD MESHGuides £500.00 D&T MESHGuides £400.00 Other £5.00 Total £21,083.78 Payments EFC Brist Project £14,953.51 Finance & social media £1,270.00 Technical Support £1,000.00 BATOD MESHGuides £300.00 Bank Charges £96.00 Website Costs (hosting, domain…) £58.65 Total £17,678.16
	Closing Balance 31st May 2022 £23,905.77

The principal sources of income for the charity are currently by way of contributions from educational organisations and universities contributions and we are very grateful for the financial

support they offer. In this financial year we have received money for the ongoing BRIST Project (which we also received money for in the previous financial year), as well as contributions to 2 sets of MESHGuides. We currently are not in a position to invest funds. If we achieve surplus funds, a decision will be taken by the board on how to best invest these ethically.

Names and addresses of advisers

Solicitors: Hewitsons LLP Solicitors Exchange House 456 Midsummer Boulevard Milton Keynes MK9 2EA Accountants: Keens Shay Keens MK LLP c/o Sovereign Court 230 Upper Fifth Street Central Milton Keynes MK9 2HR