Trustees' Annual Report for the period
| Period start date | Period start date | Period end date | Period end date | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | January | 2021 | 31 | December | 2021 | ||
| From | To |
Section A Reference and administration details
Charity name
L’ecole des filous
Other names charity is known by Registered charity number (if any) 1165754
N/A
Charity's principal address 35 Woodland road HERTFORD HEATH Postcode SG13 7QW
Names of the charity trustees who manage the charity
| 1 2 3 4 |
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 |
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
Type of governing document
Constitution
(eg. trust deed, constitution)
How the charity is constituted
Charitable Incorporated Organisation
(eg. trust, association, company)
L’ecole des filous
January - December 2021
Trustees are appointed by a resolution passed at a 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 2021
• 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 native French speakers and either qualified teachers or experienced and as a result the improvements in the children’s language skills have been noticeable. Our aim is to maintain small classes (about 8 children per teacher in each class) in order to maintain the impact of teaching on each pupil. When in September 2021 we had to downsize from 5 classes to 4 classes, one of the classes became slightly bigger with different level of aptitude in French, and therefore a teaching assistant joined in with the Summary of the main activities teacher in order to maintain that close relationship teacher/pupil or undertaken for the public teaching assistant/pupil. benefit in relation to these objects (include within this • Offering a French literature library with access for our students and section the statutory their families. declaration that trustees have had regard to the guidance • Organising social and cultural events open to our students and their issued by the Charity families. Through the years, we have arranged events linked to Commission on public benefit) celebrations from all cultures, including French speaking countries. Examples of some of our events are listed below: ● Workshop + cineclub themed around specific events/celebrations such as Easter, Halloween, Christmas … ● Musical shows in collaboration with another French school in Enfield ● Trip to London to see films as part of the South Kensington Kids festival or puppet show organised by ‘les parapluies FLAM’ ● Yearly participation in the Ware Carnival ● End of year show followed by a picnic/buffet to celebrate ‘Bastille day’ ● Christmas show ● 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 on the charities, l’ecole des filous has had to adapt to online teaching via zoom between January 2021 and March 2021, as well as to adapt their ways of working afterwards by keeping the set up initiated at the end of 2020 and using extra PPE/cleaning regime when returning to face to face tuition to ensure a Covid safe environment.
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 2021
Section D Achievements and performance
This year was our sixth year as l’ecole des filous. Summary of the main achievements of the charity Despite the pandemic and our closure from January 2021 to March 2021, 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 again stopped us from organising our usual events with our families through 2021. Through our online teaching from January to March 2021 followed by our adapted face to face tuition for the remainder of the year, we still achieved to transfer our passion of the French culture and language. One of our teachers arranged a ‘zoom meeting’ at her partner’s farm to share ‘virtually’ the new lambing season. For the last day of school in July 2021, we managed to organise outside in the playground, with parents distanced apart, a small show so that each class separately could share their learning with their families.
As the world was re-opening towards the end of 2021, we managed to organise a small Christmas show with the families.
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 again to online teaching during the first term of 2021 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.
L’ecole des filous
January - December 2021
Section E Financial review
Brief statement of the charity’s policy on reserves
Being in our sixth year running, we are still not holding a reserve yet in a separate bank account as we thought we still don’t have enough to put aside yet and we would like to spend the money accordingly to expand the school.
Like the previous year 2020, the pandemic has led to extra costs [e.g. buying a licence to allow online teaching as well as PPE during face to face teaching]. However, as good practice requires a third of the running costs to be held in a reserve account, we are still hoping to be looking into this in the near future.
Further financial review details (Optional information)
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. Between £90 and £72 for each Saturday session as went from renting 5 classrooms between January and July 2021 to 4 classrooms between September and December 2021).
Despite being now in our sixth 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 are still managing to achieve self-sufficiency, this year with the support from the French Embassy via a ‘Covid grant’ following the pandemic.
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, like last year, has been financially challenging with the pandemic and our closure between January and March 2021.
In these challenging times, it has been more difficult to retain our pupils (This year we have had just under 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 at the beginning of 2021 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 British children or adults alongside the bilingual children currently attending l’école des filous.
L’ecole des filous
January - December 2021
Account – Year end 2021 (January to December)
| Expenses | Income | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teachers fees and management cost |
£5,933.35 | Tuition fees: School | £6,917.40 | ||
| Rental costs Tower school | £0.00 | French Embassy grant | £1,540.93 | ||
| Other expenses | £714.31 | ||||
| Insurance | £188.03 | ||||
| FLAM subscription | £111.00 | ||||
| Total expenses | 6,946.69 | Total income | £8,458.33 | ||
| Profit | £1,511.64 | ||||
| Balance carried forward from 2020 |
£10,927.02 |
Section G Declaration
The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees’ report above.
Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees
| Signature(s) Full name(s) Position (eg Secretary, Chair, etc) Date |
Signature(s) Full name(s) Position (eg Secretary, Chair, etc) Date |
Nadège Galle | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catherine O’Sullivan | Nadège Galle | ||
| Trustee | Chair | ||
| 22nd October 2022 | 23rd October 2022 | ||
| Signature: Email: |
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| NADEGE GALLE (Oct 23, 2022 13:04 GMT+1) |
L’ecole des filous
January - December 2021