Us
Our Schools
Dukes Plus
Beyond the classroom
Dukes Plus Dukes Plus is a provider of university application support, life-changing career and university experiences, day camps, tuition, and summer schools.
University Applications Our curated collection of consultancies represent the best of Oxbridge, US, and Medicine application support.
Experiences Dukes is home to the UK's leading careers experiences, summer school and activity day camp providers.

Section 172 Statement

The directors believe that they have effectively implemented their duties under section 172 of the Companies Act 2006.

 

The Group is aware of the impact a good education can have on communities and is committed to extending the benefits to communities surrounding the nurseries, schools and colleges. The Group is aware of the environmental impact of the work that they do and strive to reduce their carbon footprint.

 

The Group is committed to maintaining an excellent reputation and to high standards. We are highly selective about which schools and organisations join the Group. Our family is small and close-knit. We carefully curate it to make sure we have harmony among our teams. This is why we place such an emphasis on our values.

– we lead with heart; we’re a team; we love learning; we do it well.

 

Being part of the Group means we can all come together to share experience and expertise, supporting each other to achieve the extraordinary.

 

The directors recognise the importance of the wider stakeholders in delivering their strategy and achieving sustainability within the business. The main stakeholders in the Group and their importance to the business are considered below.

 

Employees – The directors believe the employees are a key stakeholder in the Group. The Group strives to develop an underlying culture where employees can thrive in their development. The single biggest factor the directors consider when deciding if a new organisation should join the Group is whether or not the people are a good fit. This means people who are educationalists through and through, people who share our values, and who come to school every day resolved to give their best for our students. The Group’s engagement with employees is detailed in the directors’ report.

 

Children and parents – The children and their parents are key stakeholders within our Group. Our mission is to be the best at helping children achieve their ambitions. Everything we do at Dukes is driven by a strong desire to nurture young people so they can achieve their true potential.

 

Educational bodies – We know that if we want to inspire excellence in young learners, then we need to achieve excellence in everything we do. One way we accomplish this is by working closely with regulatory authorities and inspection bodies to ensure everyone in the Group delivers the highest possible standards. Additionally, the members of the Education Advisory Board come together regularly to discuss recent and future developments across the Group. Their expert support and guidance not only helps us meet best-practice standards, it encourages us to set newer, higher standards for all.

 

In ensuring that all our stakeholders are considered as part of every decision process we believe we act fairly between all members of the Group.

Modern Slavery / Anti Slavery Statement

Introduction

It continues to be a priority for Dukes Education Group to ensure that every member of our group trades ethically, sources responsibly and our systems work to prevent modern slavery and human trafficking throughout our whole organisation and in our supply chains.

We remain committed to a programme of continuing improvement through all of our practices throughout the group to combat slavery and human trafficking. This is done through the implementation of our anti slavery and human trafficking group policy and our supply chain due diligence.

Organisation structure and business

The Dukes Education Group is a family of leading independent nurseries, schools and colleges based in the UK together with a collection of complementary education offerings – day camps, summer schools, and university application consultancies run through our “beyond the classroom” businesses.

Our supply chains

Our supply chains include:

– Catering;

– Information technology;

– Professional services including (but not limited to) legal, accounting, financial, planning and development.

– Tutors / Consultants.

– Recruitment.

– Real Estate services.

Our policies on slavery and human trafficking

We have appropriate policies in place that underpin our commitment to ensure that there is no modern slavery or human trafficking in our supply chains or in any part of our business. We continuously review and update all our policies. Our own internal anti-slavery and human trafficking policy reflects our commitment to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships and to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to ensure slavery and human trafficking is not taking place anywhere in our supply chains.

Given the nature of the business operated by the Dukes Education Group family, we consider that exposure to slavery/human trafficking to be relatively limited. Nonetheless, it has taken steps to ensure that such practices do not take place in its business nor the business of any organisation that supplies goods and/or services to it.

We therefore have in place systems to:

  •  Identify and assess potential risk areas in our supply chains (e.g. catering sector).
  • Mitigate the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring in our supply chains.
  • Monitor potential risk areas in our supply chains.
  • Protect whistle blowers.

Supplier adherence to our values and ethics

We have zero tolerance to slavery and human trafficking. To ensure all those in our supply chain and contractors comply with our values and ethics we have in place a supply chain compliance programme.

Training

To ensure a high level of understanding of the risks of modern slavery and human trafficking in our supply chains and our business, we provide training to our staff. This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes our Group's slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31 August 2021.

This policy has been approved by the Board of Directors of Dukes Education Group Ltd.

Date: January 2024

Sustainability Policy

We know that to be sustainable we need to manage our business, so our decisions and impacts do not prevent future generations living their lives without hindrance. We also know that we need to enable our pupils to do the same in their lives and future employment. We are aware of the impact our operations have on sustainability – the environment, society, and the economy – and are committed to playing our part in delivering increasingly sustainable outcomes through our commitments and plans. We have therefore adopted and incorporated all the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) in our key themes below.

Our Approach

  • Decarbonisation of our estate via carbon emissions reduction and sustainable procurement.
  • Engagement of all our stakeholders by the use of our platform to inform, educate and inspire sustainable behaviours.
  • Communication using our mediums to promote our actions and generate further awareness of sustainable initiatives to all our stakeholders and the wider community.

Enhancing the quality of education, and learning and development opportunities we already provide to our pupils and staff, we will run programmes throughout the year to raise awareness of this policy and increase knowledge about sustainability and the interconnectivity between humans, the environment and life through focussing on these key themes: –

  • Health and wellbeing – including nutrition; impact of food and food wastes; the importance of neurodiversity; management of stress and anxiety for example with the recent addition of the Health Advantage App; and the significance of focussing on access to clean water and sanitation, decent work and economic growth, and eradicating poverty and hunger
  • Responsible consumption and production – including the impact on climate, water, land and air quality; energy selection and efficiency; life on land and in water of products, their manufacture and use; and the importance of good specification when buying goods and services
  • Partnerships – including the meaning of partnership; types of partners; understanding and optimising the added social value partnerships with supply chains, the community and charities creates; and relationship building for equality, peace and justice and sustainable cities, and innovation
  • Widening access to quality education – through bursaries and assisted places in our schools and colleges and our charitable arm, the Dukes Foundation, which provides grant funding to charities and community programmes globally

Commitments, Implementation and Governance

A sustainability strategy has been agreed in May 2024 to move the organisation to its carbon net zero ambition by 2050. Dukes is committed to measuring its carbon footprint in line with the internationally recognised Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

This policy is consistent with our five strategic priorities;

  1. Operational resilience
  2. World class admissions
  3. Having the best staff
  4. Quality of product
  5. Acting as a responsible organisation

This policy is consistent with our values;

We lead with heart; We are a team; We love learning; We do it well.

The Group Sustainability Director will regularly review our plans and report to the Board.