# **Trustees’ Annual Report and Financial Statement** – **2021 22** **1** ## _**Overview**_ ## LEDUCATE IN 2021 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**_ 2021 has been a year of change as the world comes to terms with a new normal. The effects of the pandemic ripple on and have profoundly changed education for a generation. Meanwhile, schools and the government turn their thoughts in earnest to catching up and recovering. We in Leducate have enjoyed taking strides on the return to in-person teaching, trips and visits; in particular, tailoring our engagement towards giving students the richest possible experience as the world opens back up. Leducate has grown and changed significantly in its management over the last year — for the first time, losing key members of the team as they move on to focus on new opportunities — while continuing to deliver our same core purpose of educating the public about the law. I would like to pause here to say thank you to our _Partnerships and Events Officer_ and _Public Relations Officer_ , without whose contributions Leducate would be nowhere near where it is today. We wish you the best of luck in your endeavours. Every year we celebrate the ingenuity and dedication of teachers to their vocation. This year we recognise that teachers will face the additional challenge of rehabilitating students back into the habit of classroom engagement. We hope that our innovative online approach allows us to pave the way for part of the solution. It also reaffirms our strategy — to make things as easy as possible for the teachers, and to do this for free — as the right one. As we close our third year as an incorporated charity, we look back on the distance we have travelled. We will call out our successes below. Here, it suffices to say that we are growing so that we can do more. We are strengthening our flexibility by embedding online management processes. We are measuring our output in a framework that consistently counts and accumulates the number of engagements across multiple potentially overlapping areas. And we are thinking about how to link that output to the outcomes that we want to see in society as a result. 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 2022 will bring. _Adam Kayani, Director and Chair of Trustees_ **3** ## _**About Us**_ Leducate is a legal educational charity that promotes people having 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. We focus on minimising the effort required by the teacher and school so that they can focus on 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 may 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. We passionately believe that empowering young people with an understanding of the law will improve their attitudes 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. **4** _**Our Strategy**_ Leducate’s purpose, as set out in its constitution, is to: _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’** . Leducate’s objective is to _**provide free legal education for everyone on their rights and responsibilities**_ . A major part of our strategy in this is to 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. **5** ## _**Our Work**_ As our third year of operation, 2021 was a year of consolidation and evolution. We have worked hard to engage with further school trusts and expand within the trusts of our existing partner schools. We have expanded our online offer through the standardisation of a **‘Leducate Explains (LedEx)’** series. We have even partnered with a tech firm to provide even more development into the technology space of education and are excited to see the results of this in the coming year. With the base of our curriculum under our belt and revamped in the last year, we were able to turn our focus outward, to partnerships and engagement. Leducate stepped up its social media engagement across multiple platforms. We continued our **‘Justice Diaries’** series, wrote to government ministers, and put in the legwork to identify contacts and build relationships with more schools. Importantly, Leducate has continued to play its networking role, supporting our partner schools to receive support from other charities such as In2Law. Leducate is so excited to continue to work with our partners and build upon the new partnerships we have made in the coming year. We look forward to running our first Inspire trip early in the next year, taking the lessons learnt in the classroom and bringing them to life. **6** ## _**Our Objectives**_ Leducate manages its performance over the course of each year by setting objectives. In 2021, with the pandemic not yet over, we continued to take a flexible approach to our objectives. With the final lifting of all COVID restrictions not taking place until the end of the academic year, this turned out to be prudent. Our objectives in 2021 were therefore a continuation of our 2020 objectives, without firm numeric targets: - _**Leducation**_ : To 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. **7** ## _**Our Highlights this Year**_ We knew that 2021 would be another unpredictable year, and it is thanks to the dedication of our team and our partners that we have so much to celebrate. We continued to work flexibly with our schools as lessons returned to classrooms, alongside our consultant teacher. We also took the summer holidays to create 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 persons. 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 2021 with their aspirations to study law at university, working with our partner In2Law, providing sessions on university applications, what studying law means and entrance exams. Moreover, with Leducate’s support and mock interviews, we were pleased to see that 100% of students who worked with us secured work experience or university placements. 2021 also saw a continued influx of volunteers joining Leducate with 13 new members. 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 material, 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 accomplished all we have done without them. We were thrilled to continue our interviews and blog series, including ‘The Justice Diaries’ with Millicent Grant QC (hon), an FAQ on moving on to university in the pandemic with our partner LittleLaw, and an in depth article on the impact of COVID on the Immigration System by solicitor Ruth Budge. Next year we are excited to holding more in-person events and being physically back into schools, returning to the Red Hill Trust’s Moving On Day for university and apprenticeship leavers. 2022 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. **8** ## _**Summary of Income and Expenditure**_ ## **Where our income came from:** Income for the year totalled £1335.94. This is directly from donations. This marks a 31% decrease in income for this year. ## **Where we spent the money:** Total expenses for the year totalled £907.71. This marks a 5% increase in spending over the previous year. This is in line with the growing needs of the charity and increased cost of services. ## _**Financial Commentary**_ Leducate’s financial year runs from 1 February 2021 to 31 January 2022. The accounts and annual report are therefore prepared to comply with the Charities Act 2011. The income of Leducate totalled £1335.94 for the year. This was raised through donations, most notably from organisations Leducate works with, online services such as Amazon and one-off donations. The level of income remains low for Leducate; however, as a low cost charity with minimal running costs, these are not anticipated to be an issue for the foreseeable future. Expenditure for the year was £907.71. 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 on moving to running events over the next financial year to increase donations but similarly increase expenditure on its charitable purpose, such as providing educational trips for schools. ## 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. **9** ## RISK MANAGEMENT The Trustees believe appropriate risk management to be the touchstone of good governance. Leducate holds a risk register, updated regularly, to 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: • **Human Resources** : There is a risk that Leducate lacks the capacity and capability to deliver what is needed, particularly exacerbated by the loss of two specialised officers. Specific recruitment is underway to replace those skillsets. The Trustees have agreed to replace Executive Committee meetings with Strategy meetings so that the full diversity of the organisation can be brought to bear on the biggest decisions facing the charity. • **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 culture of the charity has been impacted by the complete virtualisation of our interactions, in some ways positively through increased flexibility (as officers can join from university in across the UK), and in order ways negatively as the team do not build interpersonal relationships in the same way as a result. • **Compliance** : There is a risk that Leducate fails to comply with legal requirements of it and its Trustees. This risk is rated high because of the potential impact, moderated downwards by the low probability. The three Trustees and the Assistant Director all take responsibility for ensuring that the charity is sustained by met obligations. ## TRUSTEE AND CONNECTED PERSONS TRANSACTIONS No Trustee or connected person to them was reimbursed for transactions for this financial year. **10** ## _**Structure, Governance and**_ ## _**Management**_ ## Trustees: Adam Kayani (Chair) Daniel Ogilvie (Vice Chair) Olivia English (Secretary) ## Directorate: Adam Kayani (Director) Daniel Ogilvie (Deputy Director) Kieran Pereira (Assistant Director) ## Officers Olivia English (Education and Compliance Officer) Nicoleen Wong (Design Officer) Olivia Burn (Social Media Officer) Brittany Buckell (Education Officer) Anya Myers (Administrative Officer) ## Constitution: Leducate is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), incorporated on the 3 . 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. **11** 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 **12**