Trustees. Annual Report and Accounts 2020-21 LEDUCATE ## _**Overview**_ ## LEDUCATE IN 2020 Message from the Chair and Director _3_ About Us _4_ Our Strategy _6_ Our Work _7_ Our Objectives _8_ Our Highlights this Year _9_ ## FINANCES Summary of Income and Expenditure _11_ Financial Commentary _11_ - Public Benefit - Risk Management - Trustee and Connected Persons Transactions ## GOVERNANCE Structure, Governance and Management _13_ - Trustees - Executive Committee - Constitution - Organisation **2** _**Message from the Chair and Director**_ 2020 has been a trying year for people across the world. A global pandemic was not in our plans, and like everyone, it took us by surprise. All the trips, visits and sessions we had planned for the year were suddenly no longer possible, and even our lessons in schools looked uncertain. Yet, at the close of the year, we reflect on the growth of Leducate and the awe-inspiring stories of our teachers and students who, despite everything against them, still made it a year to remember. In 2020 we celebrated the ingenuity, courage and skill of not just our partner teachers, but teachers all across the country. Teachers who found a way to continue education, even with pupils learning remotely, and in doing so, kept Leducate’s goal of providing legal literacy to as many people as possible alive. In a time of uncertainty, having a constant such as school, college or university became more important than ever. At Leducate we’ve always been convinced that what we do is of the utmost importance. In a year where freedoms taken for granted by many across the world were suddenly restricted, we were reminded of how important it is to know and understand your rights and obligations. More than ever, we were aware of how the law surrounds us; it is an integral part of everything we do, and Leducate continues in its mission to empower every person to understand and enforce their rights. As we turn towards 2021, we proceed with hope that ‘normal’ might one day safely return, and that we will have learned greater flexibility as well as the value of human engagement. We view the year ahead with optimism that all of Leducate’s work in 2020 will increase our benefit the public, and we’ll continue to develop with our wonderful team, schools and supporters. Thank you to everyone who brought such a challenging year so many bright moments. Watching Leducate grow from a simple idea to an organisation that helps young people pursue their dreams and understand their rights is such a humbling experience. We cannot wait to see what 2021 will bring. _Adam Kayani, Director and Chair of Trustees_ **3** ## _**About Us**_ Leducate is a legal education charity that aims to promote a better understanding of the law and everyday legal rights especially amongst young people. We provide curriculum resources, support, sessions, and training allowing teachers to deliver lessons on a range of legal topics easily and for no cost. Our sessions cover topics from criminal responsibility, including interacting with the police and driving offences, to consumer finance and debt, and human rights. Our curriculum aims to _**inform**_ students of what their legal rights are (and where they come from), _**empower**_ them with the confidence to use them and ultimately **enable** them to become thriving members of society. Lastly, we hope to _**encourage**_ young people to explore a career in law. Our curriculum aims to make the law more accessible than ever, focussing on day to day legal scenarios that reflect the situations young people will most likely find themselves in, using the most interactive and engaging methods available. Since teachers know their students best, Leducate provides tailored training packages to enable them to deliver high quality legal education to their students. In their own classrooms, students will learn the answers to questions, including: - What is a tenancy agreement? - What are my rights under an employment contract? - What are my tax paying responsibilities? - What are my rights if I am arrested? - What does it mean to have consumer rights? - What are my human rights? Armed with this knowledge, they will feel confident enough to hold local government decision-makers to account, enforce their rights against unfair opposition from big corporations or rogue landlords, and understand their civic rights and responsibilities enough to effectively participate in a society that they feel supports them. **4** We passionately believe that empowering young people with an understanding of the law will change their attitude towards it, and support their journey into becoming informed, active members of society as adults. At the same time, we hope that our curriculum will encourage young people from underrepresented communities to explore careers in the law, which they might not otherwise have felt they had access to. In the longer term, we hope that this will broaden diversity and inclusion in the legal sector, which for too long has not been reflective of the diverse demography of England and Wales. **5** Leducate’s purpose, as set out in its constitution, is to: ## _**Our Strategy**_ _Advance the education of the public in general and, in particular, young people on the subject of law by providing an online portal and in such other ways as the trustees consider appropriate._ Leducate aims to ultimately achieve a basic legal literacy in all secondary school leavers. We are achieving this by creating curriculum and classroom resources that are delivered by teachers to their students, from professionally illustrated and designed work books to interactive online sessions. We call this **‘Leducation’** . In addition to our core provision, Leducate aims to give students and teachers in its partner schools access to a wider range of activities that will expand their interest in and understanding of legal affairs more broadly. This programme, known as **‘Inspire’** , includes initiatives such as trips to legal institutions and educational facilities and presentations by keynote speakers. Inspire is designed to support the core curriculum, so students do not just learn about how laws are made, but actually see where they are made and speak with those who impact their creation. Finally, through its **‘Aspire’** programme, Leducate aims to encourage a broad range of young people to aspire to pursue further legal education and careers in the legal sector through taking part in and providing events focussed on University admissions and professional networking in the profession. Our Aspire programme supports young people in whatever route they wish to take to practice law in their future careers. The Trustees are in agreement that our aims fully reflect the purpose that the charity was created to further. **6** ## _**Our Work**_ As our second year of operation, 2020 was a year of building upon all our hard work in our inaugural year. We have moved from our ‘pilot’ programmes to fully fledged lesson programmes, which are delivered in our partner schools across the country. We will continue to expand to new schools and increase our impact to ever more students over the coming years. Our work has been increasingly challenging in 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID-19, so we used this time to re-formulate our lessons, taking initial programmes and completely redesigning and restructuring them from the ground up. We worked with teachers, lecturers and legal professionals to create our most dynamic, engaging and legally pertinent material yet. We then took all this material a step further and created a bespoke online learning platform so that each student can take their learning in their own hands, and support teachers in our aim to create the most accessible material possible. Leducate is so excited to continue to work with our partners and build upon the new partners we have made in the coming year. We anticipate being able to run our first Inspire trips, taking the lessons learnt in the classroom and bringing them to life. We will also be revamping our Aspire programme working with even more partners to provide unique work experience and support to young people interested in law. **7** ## _**Our Objectives**_ Leducate manages its performance over the course of each year by setting objectives. In 2020, these were severely affected by the pandemic, which limited our ability to engage new schools, students, partners and volunteers. As a result, we adapted our objectives through the year to be stretching but also realistic given the circumstances. Our objectives in 2020 were therefore to: - _**Leducation**_ : Expand the reach of our core Leducation programme into more schools and online - _**Inspire and fundraising**_ : To maintain momentum in engaging with young people and society as a whole digitally and on social media - _**Aspire**_ : To continue to draw on our budding partnerships to support young people into careers in the law As the reader will see below, the Trustees are satisfied that Leducate has successfully furthered these objectives. **8** ## _**Our Highlights this Year**_ We feared that 2020 would be a subdued year for Leducate, yet we are so fortunate to have so much to celebrate. We began the year working with our partner schools determining how we would be able to deliver our curriculum materials to schools whilst most work was being carried out remotely, and determined that the best route forward would be via online learning. So we completely redesigned our lessons, creating new material and improving on our old material. We brought in a new teacher to consult, reviewing our lessons to ensure that all materials were effective from a teaching perspective and ensured that our lesson workbooks were designed with students in mind. We also spent the summer holidays creating our own bespoke learning environment which takes all of our lessons and makes them more interactive than ever, letting students engage with the law in a way not possible before. Teachers are now able to instruct students to take our courses, track their progress and even see how well they performed in sessions. Moreover, teachers are now able to pick up these online lessons in the classroom for the occasions that in person lessons take place again. We welcomed several other schools into the Leducate family, including South Nottinghamshire Academy, with whom we look forward to developing our relationship in the coming year. Throughout the year, despite education being even more challenging than ever, we have been able to provide material for students to learn about skills for life after school, covering debt and finance, consumer law, housing and contracts along with criminal responsibility and extremism. We supported schools in September 2020 with their aspirations to study law at university, working with our partner In2Law, providing sessions on how to apply to university, what studying law means and the exams you need to take to get there. Moreover, with the support and mock interviews of Leducate we were pleased to see that 100% of students who worked with us secured work experience or university placements, including a CPS placement and Oxbridge entrants. Despite being unable to to get together, in October 2020 we took part in the London Legal Walk for another year, joining the nearly five thousand people showing their support to the London Legal Support Trust from their own homes. The team participated in their own ways, from lifting weights and **9** trekking between London courts to sprinting on a hockey pitch. We managed to raise a huge £772.50 which ever advances our mission of legal education to the nation. 2020 also saw a huge influx of volunteers joining Leducate and the work we do. We were fortunate to have 14 volunteers join our ranks. Our volunteers produced a massive amount of work in the background helping to carry out research for our curriculum so that we can produce new materials and writing exciting and engaging articles on various legal topics to assist with events. We could not be more grateful for their work, nor could we have achieved all we have done without them. We were also thrilled to continue our ‘Justice Diaries’ series, looking at a day in the life of a lawyer across the legal spectrum. We were privileged to speak with Joshua Rozenberg in June, Moshin Zaidi in September and lastly the Secret Barrister in December. Next year we are excited to hold in-person events and get physically back into schools. We will also be holding our first video session teaching young people our material directly. 2021 will see us continuing to work to expand the awareness of public legal education and its importance, helping even more young people understand their rights and we cannot wait to see what it brings. **10** ## _**Summary of Income and Expenditure**_ ## Where our income came from: Income for the year totalled £1948.08. This is split between direct donations, event activities and other. This marks a 40% in income over the previous year. This was split between events and donations. ## Where we spent the money: Total expenses for the year totalled £858.80. This marks a 342 % increase in spending over the previous year. This was as a result of Leducate adapting to the remote learning environment. ## _**Financial Commentary**_ Leducate’s financial year runs from 31st January 2020 to the 31st January 2021. The accounts, and annual report, are therefore prepared to comply with the Charities Act 2011. The income of Leducate totalled £1948.08 for the year. This was primarily raised through donations in support of events which Leducate took part in, notably the London Legal Walk held by the London Support Trust. Other income includes donations given directly to the charity. The level of income for the charity was curtailed this year due to COVID-19. Expenditure for the year was £858.80. Whilst income was limited this year due to the pandemic, it also meant that expenditure was lower than anticipated. Expenditure for this year includes the website and associated costs, learning environment and general expenditure to run the charity and increase its awareness. The charity intends, once the pandemic has abated, to distribute more of its income through its Inspire programme. ## PUBLIC BENEFIT The Trustees confirm that they have complied with their duty set out in section 4 of the Charities Act 2011. Further decisions and actions for future activities for the charity have been made with consideration of the Charity Commission’s guidance on public benefit. ## RISK MANAGEMENT The Trustees believe appropriate risk management to be the touchstone of good governance. Leducate holds a risk register, updated every quarter, to **11** ensure that systemic risks are managed over the medium term. The Trustees take into consideration the risks of any actions before authorising activity and, in addition to the risk register, short term risks are raised and discussed amongst the Trustees whenever they arise. The Trustees recognise their duty to minimise any such risks that would leave the Charity exposed. The Trustees consider Leducate's key risks for the year to be: • **Resilience (coronavirus)** : There is a continuing risk that Leducate is unable to deliver over spring and early summer as a result of COVID-19. At the time of writing, schools, offices and public events have been closed to prevent the spread of the virus. The Trustees and Executive Committee are taking steps to ensure that appropriate planning is put in place, while reducing the risk of spreading the virus within the Executive Committee by enabling videoconferencing. • **People** : There is a risk that Leducate fails to maintain an environment in which its Executive Committee, volunteers and stakeholders want to deliver to the best of their ability. The Trustees and Executive Committee have carried out a ‘People Survey’ of the Executive Committee, with a view to taking action to address areas raised or prioritised by its members, led by the Executive Committee itself. The Executive Committee also recently received training as part of an ongoing move to improve Leducate’s corporate voice and further professionalise our delivery to external stakeholders. • **Human Resources** : There is a risk that Leducate lacks the capacity and capability to deliver what is needed. The Trustees are currently considering the recruitment of a teacher to the Executive Committee, to bolster the input of existing relationships with partners, patrons and supporters across all areas of expertise. ## TRUSTEE AND CONNECTED PERSONS TRANSACTIONS Trustee Chair, Adam Kayani, received reimbursement for reasonable expenses whilst acting in the capacity of director of the charity. The total reimbursed amount for this financial year was £257.24 spent on digital upkeep, travel and sundries. No other Trustee or connected person to them was reimbursed for transactions for this financial year. **12** ## _**Structure, Governance and**_ ## _**Management**_ ## Trustees: Adam Kayani (Chair) Daniel Ogilvie (Vice Chair) Olivia English (Secretary) ## Executive Committee: Adam Kayani (Director) Daniel Ogilvie (Deputy Director) Kieran Pereira (Assistant Director) Ceri Blower (Partnerships and Events Officer) Olivia English (Education and Compliance Officer) Nicoleen Wong (Design Officer) ## Officers: Olivia Burn (Social Media Officer) Brittany Buckell (Education Officer) Anya Myers (Administrative Officer) ## Constitution: Leducate is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), incorporated on the 3rd January 2019 in England and Wales, Charity No. 1181403. Organisation: The CIO is managed by a board of unpaid trustees. Trustees are appointed by resolution of trustees and selected with regard to skills, knowledge and experience for the effective administration of the CIO. The Director was appointed by the Board of Trustees for the day-to-day management of the charity of the charity, who in turn appoints and chairs the Executive Committee. **13** Registered Address 44 Chase Way, London, N14 5DE Bankers HSBC UK Bank PLC: 1 Centenary Square, Birmingham, B1 1HQ leducate.co.uk ▪︎ edu.leducate.co.uk **14**