2022-12-31-accounts - The Uganda School Project

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Independent examiner's report on the accounts

Section A Independent Examiner’s Report

Report to the trustees/ Charity Name members of The Uganda School Project On accounts for the year 31/12/2022 Charity no 1171011 ended (if any) Set out on pages 3-4 (remember to include the page numbers of additional sheets)

I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity (“the Trust”) for the year ended 31 / 12 / 2022 .
Responsibilities and As the charity trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation basis of report of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (“the Act”).

I report in respect of my examination of the Trust’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination, I have followed the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Act.

Independent I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have examiner's statement come to my attention (other than that disclosed below *) in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect:

accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Act or
the accounts do not accord with the accounting records

I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

Please delete the words in the brackets if they do not apply.

Signed: Date: 30/10/2023 Name: Nicholas Lugg Relevant professional N/A qualification(s) or body (if any): Address: 9 Darfield Avenue Owlthorpe Sheffield. S20 6SU

October 2018

IER

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Section B Disclosure

Only complete if the examiner needs to highlight matters of concern (see CC32, Independent examination of charity accounts: directions and guidance for examiners).

Give here brief details of any items that the examiner wishes to disclose .

October 2018

IER

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Harry Bucknell 10/31/2023
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DocuSign Envelope ID: D5AC2297-1139-45E9-9571-D10007D8C286

– The Uganda School Project Charity Commission No. 1171011

1. Legal and Administrative Information

a. Name

The name of the Charitable Incorporated Organisation (“the Charity”) is The Uganda School Project. The Charity is registered with the UK Charity Commission, Registration No. 1171011

b. Principal Office

The principal office of the Charity is in Surrey, England

Four Seasons, Sandlands Grove Walton on the Hill, Surrey , KT20 7UZ

c. Trustees

Name Dates acted if not for whole year

Harold Bucknell

Eleanor Smee

Evelina Lindberg Nilsson

Kinga Pecak

Naminya Saleh

Joao Magalhaes

d. Bankers (Wise & CAF)

Charities Aid Foundation Bank

Charities Aid Foundation Bank Wise Payments Limited 25 Kings Hill Ave 56 Shoreditch High Street Kings Hill London West Malling E1 6JJ ME19 4TA United Kingdom United Kingdom

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e. Independent Examiners

f. Website

www.theugandaschoolproject.com

2. Structure and Governance

The Uganda School Project was registered in 2017 as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation, and remains as such.

Our governing document is a constitution, which is based on the CIO Model Constitution as published by the Charity Commission for England & Wales. We work in partnership with our subsidiary organisation in Uganda, which is responsible for programme delivery and impact evaluation. The UK arm is largely responsible for strategy and fundraising activities. Our policy on working with our partner organisation is available here.

The Charity has a board of six (6) trustees, who were appointed as the founding trustees of the Charity and who have skills and now experience in governing the Charity. All trustees give their time voluntarily and receive no remuneration or other benefits.

The Charity has entered into a consultancy agreement with Sean Richardson, who manages the day to day operations of the organisation as Director. He has been delegated authority with approval from trustees on all operational matters including finance, employment and design and delivery of programming. The Director does not have a vote at Trustee board meetings, but can make recommendations on decision making, including but not limited to the appointment of Trustees. He is remunerated for the hours he works, as well as certain expenses (e.g. travel, training) which are enacted in furtherance of the Charitable objectives of the organisation.

There is a Safeguarding Policy in place, to which all trustees, volunteers and anyone working on behalf of the charity are aware of and subscribe to. DBS checks are carried out prior to commencement of trusteeship or any volunteer work, and the checks are carried out again in line with statutory requirements.

3. Objectives

Vision:

To ensure every child in rural Uganda has access to quality Primary School education.

Mission:

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Support primary school development in rural Uganda through building infrastructure and educational capacity in collaboration with local actors.

Activities

In furtherance of the above Vision and Mission, the organisation’s charitable activities focuses on programming that improves access to quality primary school education by constructing or redeveloping infrastructure, such as classrooms, latrines, and clean drinking water, whilst also delivering educational programming to improve the standard of education at the schools with we work with.

This is achieved through programmes that augment the existing training of teaching staff in how to manage large classrooms of mixed abilities with limited resources available, providing catchup phonics and literacy programmes for children that may need them, and providing education around gender specific issues that may create barriers to education, i.e. sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The trustees have complied with their duty to have due regard to the guidance published by the Charity Commission on the operation of the public benefit requirement.

Performance, Activities & Achievements

The performance of the charity was strong in 2022 and continued the upward trajectory both of impact in terms of programming, as well as fundraising efforts. Below is a review of the prominent achievements of the past year.

Educational Infrastructure

At Bumakenya Primary School, the site of our first redevelopment project, construction of classrooms #7 & #8 was completed. This represented a major milestone of achieving our target amount of classrooms at the school - the eight classrooms allowing a separate space for each of the seven yeargroups, plus an additional classroom space to be used by splitting ‘P1’ class (ages 5-6) into two groups, given average attendance of 100+ students in this age group. Construction was completed on budget and in a timely fashion, with no major incident, and our thanks goes to Nangheke Malisa, TUSP Coordinator, and Emuron Sam, engineer and project leader for the construction work, for a frictionless process.

Additionally, significant research and needs assessment was carried out into identifying the site of the next project, ‘School #2’. This consisted of desk based research, consultation with government officials, consultation with community leadership, and site visits to over 10 schools in the district. It was decided by TUSP in collaboration with local actors that the second project would be at Soono Primary School, a government primary school in great need of educational infrastructure (having only two classrooms for 841 enrolled students).

Educational Development

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Educational Development programming took on an even greater significance in 2022, following the reopening of government primary schools in February after two years of continuous closure from Covid-19 - the longest school closures globally.

The major activity of 2022 programming was the pilot of a new Teacher Training Programme. For the programme, TUSP contracted an education specialist as a consultant, designing a programme using evidence-based methods to improve teachers’ existing abilities to manage large classrooms of mixed abilities in low resource environments. Over five days of workshops and two weeks implementing learnings in live classroom environments, teaching staff learned about Pedagogical Content Knowledge - i.e. identifying topic-specific challenges at ‘presentation’ stage of a lesson - the use of Groupwork to promote peer support, problem solving and independent thought, and self-reflection to appraise a teacher’s own performance in a lesson, as well as that of their peers.

The workshops took place in November 2022 and early indications suggest improved learning outcomes for students. With monitoring and evaluation continuing into 2023, a full report of the programme as well an evaluation of its effectiveness against stated objectives, will be available in due course.

We continued our measurement of literacy rates and unfortunately, these have deteriorated since pre-covid measurements. This is to be expected given the long school closures, and the effects may take a long time to reverse, but gives us a focused goal to work towards.

Microfinance

TUSP decided to discontinue the Microfinance Programme in 2022. Whilst effective in providing communities of women with access to funding for growth of their own microbusinesses, the organisation decided that the programme did not strictly adhere to the stated objectives of the organisation. All loans were recouped and redistributed to other educational programmes, and all borrowers’ received the savings they had accumulated over the duration of the programme.

Capacity building

Focus was given to developing the internal capacity of our Ugandan team in 2022. To that end, we placed a volunteer (Ugandan national) as our Education and Impact Officer. Throughout the year, Masambu Bridget assisted with the coordination of the Teacher Training Programme, as well as collecting data that will be used to measure the impact of TUSP programmes. To that end, both herself and Nangheke Malisa, Project Coordinator, undertook some self-paced training through online training (using platforms such as Futurelearn and EdX) in areas such as: Safeguarding in International Development, Project Management, Monitoring and Evaluation, and Data Analysis.

Plans for 2023 include for each to enrol in a Post-graduate Diploma at the Uganda Management Institute to further their development with formal training alongside on-the-job experience.

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5. Financial Review

Fundraising

Total income for 2022 was £41,226 , our most successful fundraising year to date. This was a significant increase on 2021’s figure, and importantly doesn’t include 55% of a major single-year grant (£26,793.21) which was awarded in 2022 but with the majority of the award being remitted in 2023.

Of this total income, £26,143 was awarded across three grants, with £7,228 being raised across two challenge fundraising events (the ‘Hackney Half Marathon’ and the ‘Royal Parks Half Marathon’).

Individual Giving raised £7,561 throughout 2022, with £2,263 of that figure coming through recurring donations.

The trustees judge fundraising increases to have come about as a result of hiring Sean Richardson as a consultant, creating dedicated human resources directed towards fundraising . However it is important to note that overheads and fundraising costs will have also risen as a result of this, and in 2023 we expect to to see an improved financial return based on acquiring greater skills and experience in fundraising.

A videographer was also contracted in 2022 to produce a video to help our marketing, communications and fundraising. Whilst this was done on a volunteer basis, TUSP covered expenses of the videographer, including flights, visas, and per diems. We judge this to have been a sound investment that will reap rewards in terms of reputational uplift and ultimately fundraising increases.

Expenses

Total expenditure in 2022 was £46,472 . This comprises Programme Costs totalling £31,638, with Overheads at £14,843.

Payments made to Sean Richardson are split into three categories for the purposes of the Charity’s accounts: 40% is designated to Programme Expenses (£6,673.75), 40% is designated as Fundraising Costs (£6,673.75), and 20% is allocated to administrative expenses (£3,336.75).

A significant sum (£1,188.49) was spent on the registration process of converting our Ugandan entity from a community based organisation (CBO) to a Foreign NGO.

Cash Reserves

At the end of 2022, we were left with cash reserves of £24,845, which accounts for the fact that significant restricted grant income had been received but not yet distributed to the relevant programmes. Unrestricted cash reserves totaled £784.00, which is too low for

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comfort. In this instance, we were aware of income arriving from an end of year campaign that would boost unrestricted income early in 2023.

The charity’s reserves policy states that we aim to keep 3 months worth of running costs. Our budget for 2023 estimated 3 months of running costs to be £6,877, meaning we were below our target reserves policy. Despite this, the trustees have a reasonable expectation that the charity has adequate resources to continue to raise necessary funds and therefore continue to operate and fulfil its charitable objectives for the foreseeable future. For this reason, they continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements

6. Declaration

The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees’ report above.

Signed: Date: …………………………………… Harry Bucknell (Chair of Trustees) Signed: Date: 10/31/2023 …………………………………… Eleanour Smee (Trustee)