Independent examiner's report on the accounts
Section A Independent Examiner’s Report
| Report to the trustees/ members of On accounts for the year ended Set out on pages |
The Spark! School Book Awards | The Spark! School Book Awards | The Spark! School Book Awards |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31stJuly 2025 | Charity no (if any) |
1199965 | |
| Above |
I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity (“the Trust”) for the period ended 31 / 07 / 2025 .
- 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:
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accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Act or
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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: Name: Relevant professional qualification(s) or body (if any): Address: |
23/02/2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Tomas Wilcox | ||
| FCIE | ||
| Counterculture Partnership LLP | ||
| 23 St Leonard Road, Bexhill-on-Sea | ||
| East Sussex, TN40 1HH |
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 N/a any items that the examiner wishes to disclose .
The Spark! School Book Awards Trustees’ Annual Report
Period: 01-08-2024 to 31-07-2025
The Trustees of The Spark! School Book Awards present their annual report and independently examined accounts for the period ending 31 July 2025 and confirm they comply with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011.
There were no serious incidents during the period that should have been reported to the Charity Commission.
The Trustees have made consideration of major risks, along with any required actions to mitigate their impact. These will be reviewed by Trustees and any lessons learned from risk events will be used to improve risk management practices.
This report was initially signed off by all Trustees via electronic communication on 24-11-2025.
Our Structure
The Spark! School Book Awards is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), governed by a charity constitution document dated 20 January 2022. The only voting members are its charity trustees.
Trustee recruitment
Any new trustee must be appointed for a term of three years by a resolution passed at a properly convened meeting of the charity trustees. In selecting individuals for appointment as charity trustees, the charity trustees must have regard to the skills, knowledge and experience needed for the effective administration of the CIO.
Current trustees
Mark Clutterbuck, 20-01-2022 to present to 20-01-2027) Patrick Held, 20-01-2022 to present (renewed this period to 20-01-2028) Matthew Brown, 20-01-2022 to present (renewed this period to 20-01-2028)
As noted above, two trusteeships were renewed this period for three additional years. There have been no other trustee appointments or resignations during the period.
Acknowledgements
We would like to formally acknowledge the significant and ongoing contribution of Debbie Thomas, Rebecca Rouillard and Scott Griffin (and their respective organisations) to the work of the Spark! School Book Awards. We would also like to extend our thanks to a range of different volunteers, mentioned elsewhere in this report, who were involved with our awards this year.
Our Aims
The aims of the Spark! School Book Awards is the advancement of education for the public benefit by the promotion of reading in schools through a set of Book Awards in British schools which:
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Introduce children and teachers to an increasing range of new books and authors
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Build links between authors and pupils by providing opportunities for virtual author visits and other contacts as appropriate
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Develop children’s critical approaches to reading by providing a forum for children to vote on their favourite books
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Administer competitions for children to motivate and encourage their interest in reading
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Provide books for disadvantaged children, as identified by the school where they learn
The aims of the Spark! School Book Awards are achieved through the running of an annual competition for children in schools, where they vote for their favourite book from a shortlist selected by teams of volunteers from the education sector across the country. Books are supplied to schools through a discount provided by a local bookshop, and shortlisted authors provide a video for use in schools as well as taking part in online Q&A sessions with children, to help to build relationships between them. Competitions are organised for children on the theme of reading and a magazine is produced and provided based around the shortlisted books. Copies of books are also provided free of charge for disadvantaged pupils as nominated by teachers, purchased via donations from our Book Fund. At the end of the process, the books and authors are celebrated in a ceremony where the winning titles are announced alongside the competition winners.
Our Details
The Spark! School Book Awards Registered Charity No. 1199965 Address: 25 Denmark Rd, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, KT1 2SD Website: www.sparkbookawards.co.uk
Email: hello@sparkbookawards.co.uk
Our Activity and Achievements
Non Fiction category
Our guest category this year was non fiction texts, chaired by Nikki Gamble, which was received well by schools and had a large number of submissions from publishers. Due to the nature of these books, we made several changes to our standard eligibility criteria for this category, to ensure we had enough high-quality titles. These were as follows:
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Hardback books were accepted, although the maximum retail price (of all submissions) must be £16.99.
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Publishers could submit three titles per imprint (as in previous years).
Spark! Mark
This year, we successfully launched our Spark! Mark accreditation, which recognises institutions that actively promote reading for pleasure through engagement with the Spark! Book Awards. We purposefully kept the process simple, to encourage schools to apply, and only the lower tier Bronze accreditation was possible. In total, 17 schools were awarded this by the end of the award cycle.
School sign up
We were joined by 170 different schools this year - a very similar number as in the previous year. This total includes three schools who each had two categories provided by the last of the Bookmark funding.
Below is a table showing the number of sign ups across the different award categories, which were slightly lower for primary school categories but higher for the secondary school category.
| Category | No. Schools |
|---|---|
| Picture Fiction for Early Readers | 79 |
| Fiction for Ages 7+ | 96 |
| Fiction for Ages 9+ | 92 |
| Fiction for Ages 11+ | 58 |
| Non Fiction (Guest) | 65 |
Panels
This year our five shortlisting panels consisted of 50 volunteers from 46 different educational establishments, the majority of whom were school based. This does not include our five panel chairs, one of whom is a Trustee, three of whom are heavily involved in the awards and mentioned previously in this report, and our guest category chair Nikki Gamble, who we would like to thank, for both sharing her expertise on non fiction texts as part of the shortlisting process and for hosting our online author meets.
We would also like to extend our thanks to all of our panellists for their commitment to the awards this year, alongside their organisations for supporting them in doing so, as their contribution to the awards was greatly valued by everyone involved.
Author events
In total, we hosted 20 online author events this year, one session for each of the shortlisted books. Where relevant, illustrators were also invited to take part in these sessions. The sessions were hosted (as far as possible) at a consistent time, although slight changes were made to accommodate authors presenting from a different time zone. Similarly, the sessions for the secondary category were held after the school day, when schools were more likely to be able to access them.
Books provided
As part of our offer, schools automatically receive a set of the four shortlisted books for any category they participate in. The eight Bookmark schools also received an additional set in each of the two categories they chose to access, as agreed and funded by Bookmark. In total, this meant we provided 1,566 books to our participating schools this year. There were several schools who opted out of the awards at a late
stage, after the orders had been placed, so the books provided to them were redistributed to other schools.
As part of our agreement with Browns Books, a significant discount on additional copies of the shortlisted books is also available to participating schools. Unfortunately, it is not possible to know how many schools took advantage of this offer or how many books they ordered.
Spark! Book Fund
The aim of our Spark! Book Fund is to ensure that everyone is included in our awards, particularly those with lesser access to the shortlisted books. All of the funds donated are used to purchase additional copies of these books and give them to disadvantaged pupils nominated by teachers in participating schools.
At the end of the previous financial period, there was £210.93 of unrestricted funds remaining to be used towards our Book Fund (in addition to further restricted funds for other purposes).
In total, we received £5,185.64 in donations over the financial period to be used towards our charitable aims. This consisted of:
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£4,968.00 from the Brother’s Trust;
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£110.00 from our JustGiving page, after fees had been deducted;
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£80.00 from participating schools as a voluntary contribution on sign up;
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£27.64 from Bookmark, who agreed to use the small surplus at the end of this year towards the Book Fund.
This generosity allowed us to provide a set of four shortlisted books in a selected category to all of the disadvantaged children nominated by their teachers. In total, we provided 964 books to 241 children, across participating schools.
In total, £5,300.86 of the funds available were used to provide the books for disadvantaged pupils, leaving a further £95.86, which will be carried over into the next cycle and used to supplement further donations.
Competitions and voting
Engagement with our pupil competitions remained very strong this year, with a large number of entries to both competitions, from a variety of different schools.
There were 18 winners across our poetry and main competitions, each of whom received a variety of prizes, including certificates, trophies, book vouchers and more. Runners up received a smaller selection of prizes. Our poetry winners also had the opportunity to record their poems, with the videos played during our award ceremony.
108 schools placed their votes for their favourite books this year, our best engagement ever.
Our Future Plans
Guest category
Following the success of the non-fiction category this year, we will be retaining this as the guest category in the next award cycle. Nikki Gamble, our guest chair, has also kindly agreed to continue in her role.
The Spark! Mark
Next year, we are hoping to extend our Spark! Mark accreditation programme to a higher Silver tier.
Early bird offer
The Trustees felt the offer of a free category for schools provided unnecessary complication this year and will not look to repeat this again. Instead, we are looking to provide two sets of books per category if schools sign up by a certain early-bird date. This should help schools to engage with the awards more easily, whilst also reducing additional costs they may require.
Book Fund
In previous years, we have heavily relied on the donations from Brothers Trust towards the Book Fund. We now feel they are in a stronger financial position and will look to finance this key initiative internally, although may reach out again if unforeseen circumstances arise.
Our Finances
The Spark! School Book Awards
Charity no. 1199965
Receipts and payments accounts
Period: 01-08-2024 to 31-07-2025
| Unrestricted funds |
Restricted funds |
Total funds |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Receipts | |||
| Donations and grants | £5,158 | ||
| Participation fees | £21,775 | ||
| Investments | £10 | ||
| Sub total | £21,785 | £5,158 | £26,943 |
| Payments | |||
| Author events | £2,565 | ||
| Book fund | £5,301 | ||
| Books | £8,794 | £390 | |
| Book vouchers | £714 | ||
| Marketing and design | £2,764 | ||
| Postage and packaging | £956 | ||
| Misc. expenses | £1,515 | ||
| Sub total | £17,308 | £5,691 | £22,999 |
| Assets | |||
| Not applicable | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Liabilities | |||
| Not applicable | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Net total | £4,477 | -£533 | £3,944 |
| Cash funds last year end | £18,177 | £629 | £18,806 |
| Cash funds this year end | £22,654 | £96 | £22,750 |
Notes
- The Charity holds no assets or liabilities beyond those stated above.
Reserves
The Charity holds £3,000 in reserve to protect against unforeseen financial difficulties and to assist with planning for future growth. The interest generated will remain within the reserve account unless required.
Signed
Mark Clutterbuck, Patrick Held and Matt Brown, 24-11-2025