Anti-slavery

Education Development Trust’s Anti-Slavery Statement

Foreword by Ilse Howling, Chair of Trustees

At Education Development Trust, our values underpin everything we do. As an organisation, we seek to improve outcomes for children and adults in a wide variety of contexts around the world. This includes a number of vulnerable and marginalised groups. It is therefore not only our legal responsibility but also our moral imperative to ensure – to the best of our knowledge and ability – that none of our work or programmes involve slavery, human trafficking or other exploitation of vulnerable individuals or communities. As such our Anti-Slavery Statement, below, explains the measures we take as an organisation to best ensure the safety and wellbeing of those we work with.

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Education Development Trust is a UK charity and company limited by guarantee. We have subsidiary companies and branch offices in certain countries, and work with many organisations and governments. Our business model is mainly based on providing education and related services across the globe to raise standards, improve schools’ performance, develop teachers and open careers pathways. We have a large number of suppliers, subcontractors and partners, each of which has their own subcontractors, affiliates and associates. We are therefore connected to multiple entities through contractual relationships across many countries. As a result, our supply chains include multiple entities through contractual relationships across many countries. We are committed to mitigating any risk of modern slavery arising through the measures described below.  

We have an organisation-wide Anti-Slavery Policy, which is communicated to all branches and subsidiaries. The Policy is part of induction and initial training for all new staff: we require them to be familiar with and to follow the Policy. The Policy is updated annually in line with any new guidance on the Act and is communicated in a Company-wide notification to all employees. Where a risk is identified in a particular area we provide advice and, if necessary, training to the relevant team as necessary. We review all draft contracts and all proposed new opportunities in overseas countries and the UK, for any potential risk of human trafficking and slavery, and to comply with related legislation. We conduct due diligence on prospective partners and subcontractors to evaluate the possibility of human trafficking and slavery in their supply chains. The Policy requires us to keep records of all identified and potential risks of slavery or human trafficking across our operations and connected organisations.              

We carry out a self-assessment process every year to identify any areas of weakness or vulnerability in our processes in order to demonstrate continuous improvement. 

Following the development of our action plan in response to the 2023 review, our 2024 action plan now focuses on continuous improvement particularly in the areas of awareness raising and due diligence.

 

Ilse Howling

Chair

6 February 2025

 

Click here to download our 2025 anti-slavery statement.

 

Our previous statements

• Anti-slavery statement, April 2024
• Anti-slavery statement, March 2023
• Anti-slavery statement, August 2021