THE OPEN SCHOOL TRUST

Registered charity 328414 · accounts filings on the Charity Commission register · also known as NATIONAL EXTENSION COLLEGE, THE OPEN SCHOOL

Education and Training

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Financial health, per its FY2025 accounts

The accounts state that the Trust reported a surplus for the year with total income of £1,561,047 against expenditure of £1,271,483. Free reserves increased to £1,067,614, approaching the stated policy target of £1 million. The Trustees confirmed the financial statements are prepared on a going concern basis with no material uncertainties identified.

Automated summary of the FY2025 accounts; the evidenced findings below carry the verbatim passages.

What the accounts disclose

Accounts audited by Prentis & Co LLP. Discloses 4 of 6 completeness components.

Corporate structure

• Registered company of the charity Companies House 02438525

Leadership, per the charity’s website

• Esther Chesterman — CEO (source)
• Kerrin Compton — Director of Finance and Operations (source)
• Sarah Turner — Director of Quality and Assessment (source)

Listed on the charity’s own website when we last crawled it; roles may have changed. Pay-band disclosures above are anonymous statutory disclosures and are not attributed to any named individual.

Company officers (Companies House)

Current officers of the charity’s own company per the Companies House register, cross-checked against the Charity Commission trustee list by name. A director not on the trustee list is usually a timing or naming difference between the two registers — check both records before drawing conclusions.

• BENNETT-HART, Tim Lewis — director, appointed 20/06/2025on trustee list
• TWEED, James David — director, appointed 20/06/2025on trustee list
• WELLER, Martin James, Professor — director, appointed 22/03/2024on trustee list
• ROSE, Ceri Lianne — director, appointed 24/11/2023on trustee list
• PITTARD, Vanessa, Dr — director, appointed 09/11/2018on trustee list
• WOOLLISCROFT, Colin James — director, appointed 23/03/2018on trustee list
• MORPETH, Roslyn Louise, Dr — director, appointed 15/12/2010not on trustee list

Official officers record.

Public profiles (found on the charity’s own website): facebook · instagram

Structured financials (annual return, FY ending 30/06/2025)

Reported reserves equal ~10.1 months of spending — above the median for charities its size (median 4.8 months; benchmarks).

Per its annual return, largest income source: Charitable activities (97% of income) — components as reported reconcile to the return’s total income; not from the accounts narrative.

Per its annual return, cost of raising funds: 0.0% of total income — below the median for charities its size (5.2%) (benchmarks).

Trustees · trustee networks

• COLIN WOOLLISCROFT
• Ceri Lianne Rose
• Dr VANESSA PITTARD
• James David Tweed · trustee of 1 other charity
• Katherine Victoria Lewis-Ward
• Martin James Weller Professor
• ROS MORPETH
• Tim Lewis Bennett-Hart

Trustee list from the Charity Commission register (current, not historical).

Operates in: Cambridgeshire

Income and spending

Common questions

Funders of similar charities

Funders whose accounts show grants to charities similar to this one (and no recorded grant to this charity) — a starting list for fundraisers.

Charities like this

Semantically similar by activities and financial character, from our analysed corpus. Compare with SCHOOL-LED DEVELOPMENT TRUST.

• SCHOOL-LED DEVELOPMENT TRUST income £19.0m
• NATIONAL NUMERACY income £2.2m
• FHS TRUST LIMITED income £1.9m
• BRAMBLETYE SCHOOL TRUST LIMITED income £6.3m
• THE ST ANDREW'S SCHOOL TRUST income £2.2m
• CENTRE FOR COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY EDUCATION TRUST income £1.9m

Side by side with its peers

Each row is that charity’s latest analysed filing; every value is quote-backed on its own page.