| Trustees' Annual Report | Trustees' Annual Report | Trustees' Annual Report | Trustees' Annual Report | Trustees' Annual Report | for theperiod | for theperiod | for theperiod | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| From | Period start date | To | Period end date | |||||
| 01 | January | 2020 | 31 | December | 2020 |
Section A Reference and administration details
Charity name Other names charity is known by Registered charity number (if any) 1165754 Charity's principal address 35 Woodland road
L’ecole des filous
N/A
HERTFORD HEATH
Postcode SG13 7QW
Names of the charity trustees who manage the charity
| 1 2 3 4 5 |
Trustee name | Office (if any) | Dates acted if not for whole **year ** |
Name of person (or body) entitled to appoint trustee (ifany) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nadege Galle | |||||
| Celine Pereira | |||||
| Catherine O’Sullivan | |||||
| Xavier Mutzig | |||||
| Aurore Gilewicz |
Names and addresses of advisers (Optional information)
Type of adviser Name Address
Name of chief executive or names of senior staff members (Optional information)
Section B Structure, governance and management
Description of the charity’s trusts
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Constitution
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Type of governing document (eg. trust deed, constitution) Charitable Incorporated Organisation
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How the charity is constituted (eg. trust, association, company)
L’ecole des filous
January - December 2020
Trustees are appointed by a resolution passed at properly convened meeting of charity trustees.
Trustee selection methods
(eg. appointed by, elected by)
Additional governance issues (Optional information)
You may choose to include additional information, where relevant, about:
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policies and procedures adopted for the induction and training of trustees;
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the charity’s organisational structure and any wider network with which the charity works;
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relationship with any related parties;
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trustees’ consideration of major risks and the system and procedures to manage them.
Section C Objectives and activities
Summary of the objects of the charity set out in its governing document
To advance education in the French language and culture in such ways as the trustees shall think fit in East Hertfordshire and the surrounding area, in particular by providing tuition to bilingual children attending local schools who have an existing knowledge and understanding of the French language to enable them to practice the French language as an extra-curricular activity in order to extend their written and oral linguistic skills and by providing tuition to promote their understanding of the diverse cultures of the French speaking world.
L’ecole des filous
January - December 2020
• Providing language tuitions to bilingual children in East Hertfordshire and surrounding areas every Saturday mornings during term time for 2 hours.
The quality of teaching has been valued by our members. Our teachers are all either qualified French speaking teachers or experienced and as a result the improvements in the children’s language skills have been noticeable.
Summary of the main activities undertaken for the public benefit in relation to these objects (include within this section the statutory declaration that trustees have had regard to the guidance issued by the Charity Commission on public benefit)
Our aim is to maintain small classes (less than about 9 children per teacher in each class) in order to maintain the impact of teaching on each pupil. A couple of classes are slightly bigger and different level of aptitude in French, and therefore each teacher is helped by a teaching assistant in order to maintain that close relationship teacher/pupil.
• Offering a French literature library with access for our students and their families.
• Organising social and cultural events open to our students and their families. Through the years, we have arranged events linked to celebrations from all cultures, including French speaking countries. Examples of some of our events are listed below:
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Workshop + cineclub themed around specific events/celebrations such as Easter, Halloween, Christmas …
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Musical shows in collaboration with another French school in Enfield
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Trip to London to see films as part of the South Kensington Kids festival
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● Participation in the Ware Carnival
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End of year show followed by a picnic to celebrate ‘Bastille day’ ● Christmas show
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2 to 3 day summer holiday club in July for our students to enjoy activities taught in French
Additional details of objectives and activities (Optional information)
Due to the pandemic and its impact of charities, l’ecole des filous has had to stop teaching between March 2020 and July 2020, and to adapt their ways of working from September 2020 by setting up extra PPE/cleaning regime when returning to face to face tuition to ensure a Covid safe environment or arranging online teaching via zoom when face to face teaching wasn’t possible.
You may choose to include further statements, where relevant, about:
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policy on grantmaking;
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policy programme related investment;
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contribution made by volunteers.
L’ecole des filous
January - December 2020
Section D Achievements and performance
This year was our fifth year as l’ecole des filous. Summary of the main achievements of the charity Despite the pandemic and our closure from March 2020 to August 2020, during the year we have tried to carry on learning on managing a school and adapting our ways of working by receiving advice and training through the FLAM program (Both trustees and teachers have benefited from these online courses). In parallel, we have carried on working on improving our communication with our current students and their families but also with new potential students via our Facebook pages, our website, and Mailchimp, as well as improving our use of Quickfile, a software to manage our invoices to parents and suppliers. Unfortunately, the pandemic has not allowed us to organise any events with our families in 2020, but our main achievement was to still transfer our love of the French culture and language via small challenges during the first lockdown between March 2020 and July 2020 despite the difficult situation everyone was facing. As previous years, teaching the French language to children can be a challenge due to the different levels of speaking/understanding by the children, especially when we had to move to online teaching at the end of October 2020 but in these unprecedented times, the situation has be well managed by the team of teachers, and all the pupils have progressed in their ability to understand, speak and write in French. 4 of our students have taken the DELF A2 Prim exam in November 2020 since the original June session was postponed, and all have achieved excellent marks with an average of 93.5% and with one of them achieving 100%.
Section E Financial review
Being in our fifth year running, we are still not holding a reserve yet in a Brief statement of the separate bank account as we thought we still don’t have enough to put charity’s policy on reserves aside yet and we would like to spend the money accordingly to expand the school. Indeed, we have had extra cost due to the pandemic: e.g. buying a licence to allow online teaching as well as PPE when returning to face to face teaching. However, as good practice requires a third of the running costs to be held in a reserve account, we will be looking into this in the near future.
Further financial review details (Optional information)
L’ecole des filous
January - December 2020
You may choose to include additional information, where relevant about:
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the charity’s principal sources of funds (including any fundraising);
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how expenditure has supported the key objectives of the charity;
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investment policy and objectives including any ethical investment policy adopted.
Our classes are attended in school premises in Ware, Hertfordshire, that are rented by the charity (cost of renting of £9 per hour per classroom, i.e. £90 for each Saturday session).
Despite being now in our fifth year running, we have decided to keep the tuition fees per term the same, i.e. £140 for one child, £266 for 2 children and £385 for 3 children (maintaining 5% discount for the 2nd sibling and 10% discount for the 3rd sibling).
The account shows that we have managed to carry on achieving selfsufficiency. We are still trying to build up a small reserve in order to invest into more books and DVDs for our library and also to organise more workshops and a few days as holiday club, arrange new trips to French speaking shows and maybe ultimately arrange an exchange with a French school.
This year has been financially more challenging with the pandemic and our closure between March and July 2020.
In these challenging times, it has been more difficult to retain our pupils (This year we have had around 30 pupils attending our classes) so we are hoping this number will remain stable.
Indeed, due to the pandemic/lockdowns we had to close the school and when we returned to face to face tuition, we were not allowed to have more than 30 people in the school premises which has resulted in losing some children.
In the future, we are still keeping in mind to maybe be able to open one or more classes to not only bilingual children but also British children.
Account – Year end 2020 (January to December)
| Expenses | Income | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teachers fees and management cost |
£4,726.38 | Tuition fees: School | £7,122.00 | |
| Rental costs Tower school | £720.00 | |||
| Other expenses | £1,095.02 | |||
| Insurance | £188.03 | |||
| FLAM subscription and training | £75.00 | |||
| Total expenses | £6,804.43 | Total income | £7,122.00 | |
| Profit | £317.57 | |||
| Balance carried forward from 2019 |
£10,559.45 |
Section G Declaration
[The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees’ report above. ]
L’ecole des filous
January - December 2020
Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees
Signature(s) Nadege Galle Full name(s) Nadege Galle
Digitally signed by Nadege Galle Date: 2021.10.29 17:10:56 +01'00' Catherine O’Sullivan
Position (eg Secretary, Chair, chair etc) Date 29 Oct 2021
secretary
L’ecole des filous
January - December 2020