2025-03-31-accounts

Trustees’ Annual Report

For the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025

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Section A – Reference and administration details

1. Charity name:

• Insight Outreach

2. Registered charity no 1178862

3. Principal address: 38 Queens House, Fennel Close, Maidstone, Kent

4. Postcode: ME16 0SZ

5. Names of the charity trustees who manage the charity:

	Trustee Name	Office (if any)	Dates acted (if not for whole year)	Names of person (or body) entitled to appoint trustee (if any)
1	Joyce Connell- Connell	Chair		IO Trustees: ●Joyce Connell ●Akshar Abhyankar ●Louise Welch ●Natalie Wallis ●Vinnie Sivadev
2	Akshar Abhyankar	Vice Chair & Partnerships	until December 2024
3	Louise Welch	Operations
4	Natalie Wallis	Treasurer
5	Vinnie Sivadev	Partnerships
5	Simon McMaster	Legal and Compliance

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Section B – Structure, governance and management

6. Description of the charity’s trusts:

Insight Outreach is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (Foundation Model)

7. Type of governing document (e.g. trust deed, constitution):

The charity is governed by a constitution

8. How the charity is constituted (e.g. trust, association, company): Insight Outreach is constituted as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation - Foundation

9. Trustee selection methods (e.g. appointed by, elected by):

New Trustees may be recruited to the Board at any time by the Trustees. In selecting individuals for appointment as Trustees, the Trustees must have regard to the skills, knowledge and experience needed for the effective administration of Insight Outreach.

10. Additional governance issues (optional information):

10.1 Relationships with partners

Since its inception as an approved charity, Insight Outreach (IO) has benefitted from an arm’s length partnership with Insight Education (IE) Limited, a company focusing on disseminating the benefits of academic mentoring in the education sector. The Managing Director of IE is also the Co-founding Trustee of IO and continues to donate IE’s processes, systems and academic Oxbridge Mentoring syllabus and materials to IO to enable the charity to run the Oxbridge Mentoring Scheme on a wide scale for free for students that attend UK state schools.

In 2024, IO were pleased to have partnered with educational enterprise Leading Education who had a social enterprise arm working with state school students who had registered for the company’s “LEAP Programme”. Insight Outreach went forwards in April 2024 supporting 73 of Leading Education’s “LEAP” students through the provision of over 20 hours of academic support on the Oxbridge Mentoring Scheme.

During the same reporting period, IO continued its support of Amos Bursary for the November Interview Workshop and Universify Education. For the latter charity, IO offered a limited number of places to the beneficiaries of the charity, however the places were not taken up. Universify informed IO that this was part of a wider trend seen amongst their beneficiaries who were not taking up external support at post-16, offered by partner organisations.

10.2 Wider network

Insight Outreach continued its membership with the Fair Education Alliance - a coalition of 250 organisations - which aims to tackle inequality in the education system, responding accordingly to calls for documentation and returns. Insight Outreach however found it challenging to provide meaningful data due to the limited nature of its operations.

Insight Outreach once again held its annual IO Interview Workshop at the central London offices of Hogan Lovells Law Firm in November 2024. The physical location allowed Trustees, Board members and volunteers to meet in person to run the online workshop for more than 50 OMS

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students and partners’ beneficiaries who had registered. It was a successful day with positive feedback from OMS beneficiaries.

For IO’s November Interview Workshop, the space provided by Hogan Lovells also enabled the charity Board to come together to deliver the conference online to students who attended from all parts of the UK. We were fortunate to have the attendance of Zoe Campbell, Senior Admissions & Tinsley Outreach Officer at Worcester College, Oxford University.

10.3 Policies & Procedures

To guide operations, Insight Outreach had the following in place for the period covering this annual return:

• Scoring mechanism for applicants to rank and identify students for OMS places.

• Conflict of Interest Form

• Conflict of Interest Register

• Website Terms and Conditions

• Safeguarding Children Policy

• Privacy Policy

• DBS Application Procedure

• Online Mentor Application Form

• Online Student Application Form

• Mentor OMS Booklet and mentoring schedule

• Student OMS Booklet, including frameworks and resources

• OMS Self-Study Booklet and task schedule

10.4 Recruitment of administrative support

For the reporting period above, IO recruited a part-time paid member of staff, Rama Rustom, who took on the role of OMS Operations Co-ordinator for the majority of the reporting period, taking over from a previous post-holder. This was of great help to Trustees and Board as the staff member efficiently managed all correspondence relating to tutors and students who were on the programme.

10.5 Induction of Trustees and New Board Members

Where needed, proposed new trustees and the rationale for new board members are tabled as an agenda item for discussion at quarterly Board meetings or in between board meetings, as needs of the charity dictate. Similarly, voting is undertaken at Board meetings or out-ofcommittee meetings. The normal practice is to appoint persons to the IO Board and then later as a Trustee, when a position becomes available.

After voting, the Co-founding Trustees run background checks on applicants and write a letter of invitation to join the Board. Once the new member accepts in writing, Insight Outreach provides background reading material on the charity and minutes of the last Board meeting. They are formally introduced and welcomed as a new member at the next Board meeting.

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Section C – Objectives and activities

11 Summary of the objects of the charity set out in its governing document:

The purpose of Insight Outreach is the advancement of education and life chances of young people, particularly sixth form students who are socially and economically disadvantaged and/or from ethnic minority backgrounds, by:

• (a) Providing mentoring advice and educational support and activities to extend learning beyond the school syllabus.

• (b) Encouraging study of courses at higher education, particularly at Oxford and Cambridge universities.

• (c) Encouraging development of individual capabilities, competences, skills and understanding to cope with university life and studies and find employment.

12 Summary of the main activities undertaken for the public benefit in relation to these objects:

In pursuing the objects of Insight Outreach, the trustees have undertaken the following activities for the public benefit of students:

• (a) Wide use of the OMS syllabus based on mentoring and motivational learning to facilitate educational attainment and personal development.

• (b) Materials, guidance and learning frameworks made widely available through email distribution.

• (c) Provision of online education via a dedicated teaching platform to run classes across multiple subjects.

• (d) Lessons, seminars, conferences, lectures and cultural experiences to increase educational engagement and help achieve educational goals; and

• (e) Work experience opportunities to develop leadership, entrepreneurial and problem-solving skills, build a CV and improve future employment prospects.

• (f) Creation of a UK-wide network of IO Ambassadors to build networks at schools and universities.

• (g) Offering Social Impact or other Internships (through its partners) for former OMS students to further develop their employability skills.

Specifically relating to accessing Oxford and Cambridge universities, Insight Outreach also carried out the following activities to help students make informed decisions and familiarise them with the admissions process:

• (a) Oxbridge-style mock interviews with comprehensive feedback.

• (b) Teaching and practice of mnemonics to help students hone essay-writing and problemsolving.

• (c) Recommendations on wider reading based on first year of chosen Oxbridge course.

• (d) Brainstorming and advice to produce a top calibre UCAS personal statement.

• (e) Online Oxbridge-style tutorials to hone critical thinking and problem-solving and practice skills required by entrance tests and academic interviews.

• (f) Insight into courses and colleges from Oxford and Cambridge students and graduates.

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13 Additional details of objectives and activities (optional information):

13.1 Vision, Mission and Values

Insight Outreach has publicly articulated what the charity stands for in a statement of our vision, mission and values.

Our Vision is of a thriving, equal society where every bright young mind has the skills, confidence and opportunity to aspire to and achieve their higher education goals, opening the doors to a future that reflects their talent, not their background.

Our Mission is to tackle underrepresentation at the UK’s top universities so that students with talent and potential can secure a place, succeed and progress in their chosen career.

The Values , ideals and characteristics that IO embodies and instils in our volunteers, future leaders and change-makers are as follows:

1. Spark Ambition: dream without limits and exceed expectations.

2. Champion Student-led Learning: take ownership of academic and personal development.

3. Develop Critical Thinking: forge new ideas, alternative perspectives and creative solutions to complex problems.

4. Build Resilience and Confidence: overcome, reflect and grow in response to challenges.

5. Foster an Inclusive Community: build social capital based on trust and respect, where networks are harnessed for social good.

13.2 Target Audience

Insight Outreach’s target audience are Year 12 students who attend school in England and Wales. We particularly welcome applicants from underrepresented backgrounds, such as those underrepresented ethnic minorities and from postcodes with low progression rates to university. Our website www.insightoutreach.org states our objectives are to:

• Increase the application and success rate of state school students to Oxbridge

• Increase the application and success rate of underrepresented groups to Oxbridge

• Increase the application and success rate of students from low socio-economic backgrounds to Oxbridge

• Increase the application and success rates to Oxbridge from students living in postcodes with low progression rates to university

• Bridge the independent study and creative thinking skills gap between school and university

13.3 Eligibility criteria for applying for IO’s Oxbridge Mentoring Scheme

We have stated the following criteria on our website for students considering applying for OMS:

• Must be in Year 12 and attend a state school or college in England and Wales.

• ● Have at least 7-9 GCSE grades (actual or predicted by an examining body.

• Studying relevant A level subjects for their intended future undergraduate degree.

In addition, we implement a holistic system which allocates ‘flags’ to students meeting additional criteria, such as:

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• On free school meals

• In POLAR 1 or 2 quintiles or in IMD 1 or 2 areas

• From ethnic minority groups underrepresented at Oxford or Cambridge

• First generation of their immediate family to go to university

• Care leavers or caregivers

13.4 Trustees’ Commentary on Contribution made by Volunteers

During the period covered by this report (1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025), Insight Outreach benefitted from the participation of 34 volunteers:

• 40 OMS Mentors (34 unpaid volunteers and 6 Lead Mentors, 2 of which participated in small group mentoring sessions between monthly Lead mentoring sessions)

• 2 persons volunteering their time as Child Protection Leads

• 15 IO Board members

• A mix of Trustees, Board members and previous OMS students contributed their time to scoring applicants for OMS 2023

The involvement of IO volunteers as Mentors enabled the charity to provide academic mentoring services in OMS 2024 to 119 students, working individually or in small groups with Mentors. IO feels lucky and is grateful for the dedication of all our volunteer mentors, Board members, public followers and partners. It should be noted that whilst IO worked with 119 students, there were 100 students on the programme at any one time. When students self-selected themselves off the programme, IO found replacements students from among applicants who did not originally manage to get a place on the programme.

13.5 Paid Lead Mentors

For the first time at Insight Outreach, OMS enlisted the help of paid mentors who were seasoned mentors from running the OMS in previous years (some since inception of the charity). Lead Mentors delivered monthly webinars over 10 months and were each responsible for one of the follow 5 academic strands: Problem-solving; Bioscience; Medicine; Law; Humanities.

These webinars were delivered alongside monthly mentoring sessions in smaller groups led by volunteer mentors. The concept for delivery of OMS was solid. However, the programme suffered from an evident lack of student engagement mid-way through the programme, which was most notable in the problem-solving strand, and also in the medicine strand.

Section D – Achievements and performance

14 Student Selection & Mentoring Process

The selection process was based on a scoring system developed by the Insight Outreach team. Students were selected based on their demographic background, motivation for the OMS, apparent academic aptitude and the number of spaces we could offer students.

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Here are the key statistics of the 2024 cohort of the Oxbridge Mentoring Scheme:

• 119 students benefitted from the 2024 OMS. See chart below for information on the partner organisations (University, Amos Bursary, The Elephant Group and Leading Education) that referred students onto the OMS.

• 38% of LEAP students were male, 62% were female.

• 37% of LEAP students were from non-White ethnic backgrounds. 4% of students were of Bangladeshi ethnicity and 11% of African ethnicity. See chart below for ethnic backgrounds.

• 30% of LEAP students were recipients of Free School Meals

• 52% of students would be in the first generation to attend university

• 1% of students were living in care or caregivers.

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15 Performance Review

Insight Outreach undertakes continuous improvements and has the following in place to help the charity keep its knowledge up-to-date and improve mentoring process and experience for Mentors and students:

• Mid-point checkpoint questionnaire (in August / September)

• Post-Oxbridge interview questionnaire (sent to OMS students in December)

• OMS Interview Results Questionnaire (January)

• Ad-hoc qualitative feedback from volunteer Mentors on their experience of supporting their student(s) through their OMS journey

By comparison with previous years, we have not been able to collect student and impact data, as we would have liked, due to LEAP students not responding, and also due to a change in resources at Leading Education preventing follow-up to chase down students who benefited from the programme. This has been a disappointment outcome for Insight Outreach as the charity has therefore not been able to provide an accurate or clear reflection of its impact in the April 2024 to March 2025 reporting year.

16 Areas for improvement

From an in-house operational perspective, and as part of continuous improvement, Trustees identified issues with OMS 2024, and through discussion and brainstorming, generated some options and solutions for future implementation.

• Student engagement reduced as OMS progressed. This in turn meant that OMS Mentors also disengaged from mentoring as they received lack of response from their mentees. The opposite scenario was also identified in that some mentors did not engage with their mentees in accordance with the timetable and despite prompts from the OMS team. This is unfortunate, given IO training and processing of DBS forms. Some way needs to be found to incentivise engagement.

• Low response rate to the OMS “end-of-cycle” survey (there was a low response rate to the November workshop survey - only 14 respondents when there were more than 50 students who registered. It was not possible to evaluate the OMS 2024 programme due to changes to personnel amongst the partner organisations that referred students onto the OMS programme).

• Insight Outreach’s online Portal (built by social enterprise Gotoco) provided access to Oxbridge Mentoring materials created by Insight Education for use by OMS students. A continuation of the year before is that the portal remained under-utilised. Instead, updated OMS Mentor and Mentee booklets provided guidance and access to online documents, supplemented by monthly prompt emails which reinforced monthly tasks and provided hyperlinks to documents.

Based on the analysis of the qualitative section of the previous OMS Impact Survey to the 2023 cohort of student also highlighted other areas that were relevant to the OMS 2024 programme, namely:

• More admission exam support, including essay-writing and LNAT preparation for multiple choice questions.

• To combat poor engagement and cooperation among students, instead of Future Leaders Session, more independent tasks to be set so there is far less reliance on others. Students shared that they needed guidance on what to cover in these sessions.

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• Clashes in timetables between OMS and student after-school commitments leading to missed sessions.

• Mentees being assigned Mentors in a different subject to their intended undergraduate degree.

• Mentees wishing to have greater subject-specific help and support.

• Unresponsive mentors.

• Wish for a higher frequency of mentoring sessions with more “high pressure” interview support and a drilling of frameworks.

• Desire for students to access resources earlier, especially if applying for a choral or organ scholarship.

Students also came up with the idea for as a series of OMS podcasts run by mentees with each talk / episode representing a Future Leaders Session. There was also a request for more in-person sessions and events.

Section E – Financial review

17 Financial Management

Management of IO’s accounts continues to be supported by a parent volunteer Jennifer Appiah who manages IO accounts and prepares papers for the Board.

18 Brief statement of the charity’s policy on reserves

Currently Insight Outreach does not have a policy on reserves.

19 Details of any funds materially in deficit

Insight Outreach does not prepare accounts on the accruals basis or have any funds materially in deficit.

20 Principal source of funds

Since its establishment, Insight Outreach has received donations from trustees, parents and partners.

The charity also received a continuous donation from an anonymous donor and intermittent payouts from the Give as You Live facility because of supporters’ online purchases donating a percentage of its service fee to Insight Outreach. To date of writing this report for the 31 January 2025 submission date, the charity has received £376.06 from kind supporters.

At the start of this reporting period, Insight Outreach was set to receive donations from 3 commercial partners with Corporate Social Responsibility goals that aligned with that of the charity. Of an expected £8K, IO received £3K from one corporate supporter. This has helped cover the costs of the Lead Mentors for the 5 academic strands and the part-time salary of one member of staff undertaking the role of OMS Business Manager. It is with high disappointment that monies promised contractually from one partner amounting to £5K were not received nor recovered. Insight Outreach did not have the funds for legal advice or support to extract the funds owed to the charity.

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21 Future strategy

Insight Outreach’s legal form (a 'Charitable Incorporated Organisation') enables the charity to create partnerships to generate income.

The intention is to turn Insight Outreach into a self-funding organisation by attracting corporate sponsorship and grant-funding, as well as through fundraising events The Trustees have agreed that moving forward, the ability to hire a full-time IO Operations Manager would greatly benefit the charity and allow for expansion and operational sustainability. Securing funding has continued to be challenging for Insight Outreach. Currently, Insight Outreach has no investable funds, and as such has not yet adopted any specific investment policy.

Given the issues with student engagement, and the lack of engagement which has prevented the intended growth of the charity to be fully supported by full time members of staff, the Board of Trustees decided to use the next reporting year to reflect on its place in a moving social mobility landscape and create a blue print for a new programme. Initial ideas include a programme which comprises entirely of webinars, and which therefore lends itself to being turned into a resource that can be accessed by future beneficiaries who register for the programme.

Section F – 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) Joyce Connell-Cousins Position (eg Secretary, Chair) Co-founding Trustee Date (DD/MM/YY) 27 January 2026

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Receipts and Payments Accounts & Assets and Liabilities Charity name: Charity number: For the period from (start date): To (end date): Section A- Receipts and Payments Account Receipts General donations, legacies and grants Donations from Insight Education Fundraising events Interest on deposit account Referral Income Fees for charitable services (e.g. delivering training, workshops etc) Other receipts Asset and investment sales Receipts from sale of fixed assets Receipts from sale of investments Loan repayments received Loans received from external funder Payments Administrative and fundraising costs Cost of fundraising events Wages / salaries and national insurance It Cost Regulatory and admin Costs Tutoring/Mentorship Operation Management Grants and donations paid Bank interest and charges Costs of providing charitable services Rent/hire of rooms Repairs and maintenance Student Reward and Prizes Office supplies Transportation fees Asset and investment purchases Purchase of fixed assets Purchase of investments Loans made Loans repaid to an external funder Excess of Receipts over Payments Transfers and movements Transfers between funds Bank current and deposit accounts 04 January 2024: Bank current and deposit accounts 31 March 2025: Section B- Statement of Assets and Liabilities Cash Funds Bank current account Other Monetary Assets Tax reclaims dues Recoverable grants and charitable loans due to the charity Other debts (recoverable amounts) due to the charity Investment Assets Quoted securities Property held for investment purpose Investments in subsidary / associated companies Other investments Assets retained for the charity's own use Land and buildings occupied by the charity Motor vehicles Computers and other equipment Furniture, fixtures and fittings Other assets Liabilities Immediately due Unpaid taxes Staffing costs Supplier's accounts not yet paid Payable sometime in the future, or contingent Loan liabilities Amounts payable on hire purchase / other leasing arrangements Any other liabilities	Insight Outreach 1178862 04/01/2024 31/03/2025 ( as at 18/01/25) Unrestricted Funds Restricted Funds Endowment Funds Total This Period Total Last Period: 1st April 2024 - 31st March £3,259 - - £3,259 £2,475 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - £9
	£3,259 - - £3,259 £2,484
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	- - - - - - - - - - £47 - - £47 £338 £439 - - £439 £166 £3,301 - - £3,301 - £500 - - £500 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - £24 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - £922
	£4,287 - - £4,287 £1,450
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	-£1,028 - - -£1,028 £1,034 - - - - - £3,310 - - £3,310 £2,705 £2,282 - - £2,282 £3,310 Total at End of Period (31/03/2025) Total at Start of Period (04/01/2024) £2,282 - - £2,282 £3,310 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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