Policies & Statements - Dukes Education

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 2022