EDUCATION OTHERWISE
Open Meeting of Council of Trustees on Saturday 24th November 2012
Coalbrookdale Hostel, Ironbridge, TF8 7NR
MINUTES
Meeting commenced at 2.40pm
Present
Trustees:
Beverley Cameron Young
(treasurer)
Bryony McDonagh
Celia McDonagh
(joint secretary)
Trustees:
Lei Ashe
Shena Deuchars
Hanna Newton
Carol Stone
Kathleen Thompson
Margaret Wells
Janet Wilkinson
SUMs:
Fe Mukwamba-Sendall
Anne Rix (chair)
Edwina Theunissen
(enquires secretary)
Andries Theunissen
Wendy Charles-Warner
(Wales Campaign Rep)
Alison Sauer
Janet Simpson
Apologies
Members:
Natasha Arthur, Jan Atkinson
Andrew & Gwen Baldock
Jane & John Bathgate
Jo Borthen, Gary Brown
Katherine Deuchars la Fleur
Jill Fisher, Tracey Foyster
Julian Hardy, Tean Hatt,
Andrew Kennell
Chair: Anne Rix
Carla Macgregor
Fiona Nicholson
Priscilla Park-Weir
Rosemary Stace
Ann Samuel Till
Charlie Samuel Till
Henrietta Turnbull
Anne & Rob Wade
Minutes: Alison Sauer
1. Welcome We hoped to see more members but many thanks to those who came!
2. Minutes of Meeting of Council of Trustees 26th May 2012 Approved unanimously as amended.
3. Matters arising from the minutes (not otherwise on agenda)
EO office furniture being stored in Watt Sure office – now disposed of at no cost and no return
4. Ratification of decisions made via trustee forum since last meeting
1. Purchase of MS Access for Local Group Co-ordination, listings & Insurance
2. Move EO web hosting to a dedicated EO account at Heart Internet.
3. To purchase Sendblaster 2 software in EO's name for sending mass emails to members.
4. To purchase a year's subscription to AuthSMTP as a 'pipeline' for sending the emails.
5. Proposal to appoint Louisa and Charles Southey as joint new EO Webmasters as of 1st September.
6. To order pre-printed membership letter with two integral membership cards from Spindrift.
7. To Renew Trustee indemnity insurance.
8. To support Wales campaign against proposals for compulsory registration and monitoring by
funding costs for printing and distribution of briefing paper to AMs; appoint Wendy CharlesWarner to represent EO to Wales Assembly Members and act as a focus for EO members in Wales
during campaign.
9. To propose Special Resolution to amend M&As by reducing quorum of members at AGM.
10. To ban a member of EO HE-Support Yahoo email list from the group, for breaking specific list rule
on no commercial posts (despite warning).
All ratified unanimously.
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5. Reports
a.
Special Educational Needs & Disabilities – Andrew (no report)
Anne reported that Andrew has retired from dealing with enquiries, due to ill health, but continues to
maintain contact with Denice who deals with email enquiries. Jo has also retired, so we have no one with
specialist knowledge to take phone calls now. For the present calls will be directed to Enquiries
volunteers and will be signposted to HE-Special Yahoo list. Newsletter to carry advert for volunteer/s to
take phone calls.
b.
Company Secretaries – Janet & Celia (verbal)
Celia happy to carry on with holding company files and documents, Janet Wilkinson can no longer
continue to fulfil the rest of the statutory role due to other commitments. For now Anne will file the
returns etc. given appropriate login information.
c.
Treasurer - Beverley
Draft Accounts presented. These will be carried forward to the AGM. Barry Darlington (independent
examiner of the accounts) is currently dealing with HMRC regarding the ongoing dispute and fines
concerning PAYE issues.
In order to add Edwina Theunissen as a signatory to the Unity Trust Bank accounts (held by EO) as
discussed in both previous council meetings it was resolved that:
1.
The mandate for the operation of the Bank payment instructions and banking services is provided
to the bank and that amendments to the mandate may be provided by any Committee members,
Director or Trustee or any other officer of the organisation who is notified to the bank as being
authorised by the committee to do so.
2.
The bank is entitled to rely upon this mandate until it receives a later mandate amending it
3.
The bank will be notified in writing of any change in trustees of EO
4.
The terms and conditions remain unchanged in all other respects
The bank mandate form authorising Edwina Theunissen as a signatory (currently Shena Deuchars,
Beverley Cameron-Young and Celia McDonagh are the signatories) will be completed and sent
immediately following this meeting.
Gift Aid was noted as not having been claimed for the last 12 months or so (although Barry has informed
us that it can be claimed retrospectively) and Beverley had been given no information as to how to
operate the Gift Aid scheme. In addition there is no gift aid tick box on the online form. Trustees will
investigate the operation of the gift aid scheme further and the web masters will be asked to add gift aid
to the online form.
d.
Membership – Shena (no report)
Shena was unable to attend or present a report due to illness. Sarah’s report (online joining) read and
accepted. Shena will be asked how close she is to finally resolving the membership issues.
Anne reported that the printers had said the new batch of annual renewal/joining letters, which
incorporate 2 pop-out membership cards, would be delivered to Shena within the next 7 days.
e.
Local Contacts Co-ordinator – Lei: (no report)
Celia reported that 14 EO Local Contacts had taken up the offer of a box of HE books, at cost of carriage
only, as had been discussed on Trustee Forum. This will enable EO to dispose of old stock that can no
longer be sold. Lei to be asked to provide list of names and addresses to stock-holder a.s.a.p.
f.
Enquiries – Edwina: Report annexed
Edwina’s report was accepted with the addition that Alison Sauer has been appointed Flexischooling
contact.
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g.
Publications – Anne (verbal)
Ongoing problems with newsletter due to lack of technological expertise (Rob having been unable to
provide this since August due to family circumstances) meant no Autumn NL was issued (though a plain
bulletin was sent to members in September). This situation is ongoing and the only way to get a Winter
NL to members may be for it to be prepared in a simpler format. The new Webmaster has created an
additional member area for meetings etc. and information about the WAG campaign has been posted on
the public area of the website. Some articles on website need review and amendment, and volunteers
are needed to do this.
h.
Chair – Anne (verbal)
Has produced draft Trustee Report for submission to Charities Commission, meeting agendas etc., but
otherwise mainly nagged others to carry out tasks and attempted to fill gaps. Meeting affirmed that was
appropriate for Chair.
6. Ratification of volunteers – None presented.
7 & 8 Members forum & Website
Ongoing issues are: Going back to .org? Ditching 1&1 as host? Transferring Member & Trustee Forums
to new Website? Discussion to continue on the trustees forum and brought to next meeting.
9. Yahoo list
Anne reported that Andrew has been trying to change the ownerships of some of the groups to
eo_council or eo_trustees but has had no luck. He suggested changing over ownership to one of the
Mods, who might be able to do the changes. But she replied:
We need to have the log in details for the Yahoo profile eo_trustees or eo_council in order to
activate the accounts. The problem is that we have no idea what the alternate email addresses
are. When you sign up for Yahoo, you usually give an alternate address so that if you lose your log
in password etc. it can be sent to your other email address and you can click on a link from that
email message.
Anne asked whether anyone had any ideas. Celia offered to ask Fiona Nicholson if she has any login
details to enable the Yahoo list ownership to be transferred and report back to Trustee Forum.
10. Wales
Anne & Edwina reported that EO response in both English and Welsh had been submitted on the
morning of 23rd Nov. 2012, the day the consultation closed.
Wendy reported that the WAG office have intimated they are inundated with responses. We have
overall support from all three opposition spokespeople (inc. Shadow minister Angela Burns). All are
indicating they are against the licensing/monitoring but are less sure about opposing registration. This
means probably we have 50% support to oppose monitoring/licensing.
More work needs to be done reaching Labour AMs but this is more difficult and must be done through
people living in their areas.
Civil servants have also intimated that registration (possibly through groups) will be put into the draft bill
but monitoring etc. may not. Draft bill expected to be presented July 2013, and pass into law June 2014.
Suggestion that EO could emphasise that people from outside of Wales can participate in both the
campaign and any consultations and petitions etc.
11. M&As – Special Resolutions have been drafted for AGM, to reduce number of trustees to between 8
and 15, and quorum at general meetings to 16.
13. AOB – None raised.
Meeting closed at 4.15pm
SIGNED Signed as a true and correct record
on ...............6th May..............2013
by........... Anne Rix ..........
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(Chair of Meeting)
Education Otherwise Association Limited OCM – 24th November 2012
Enquiries Secretary’s Report
The Team
There have been one or two changes. Caroline Davies has stepped down due to increasing ill-health and
Sinead Hadavi has joined the team. Andrew has also had to step down for the time being and so
recruitment is needed once more.
Email Enquiries
Email enquiries continue as before. It would be good if we could get rid of the spam but I understand it
would be/will be a time-consuming exercise. GCSE/exam queries from the website go directly to Roger
Scaife and SEN enquiries go directly to Denice, removing them from general enquiries, most of which
these days tend to be “how to” and deregistration enquiries and adverts for tutors or education services.
Statistics
Figure 1 Helpline Statistics: June- November (part) 2009-2012
The number of calls was slightly down during the summer but rose with the beginning of the new term,
especially towards the end of September. On the 10th October there was a noticeable increase and also on
the 11th, 18th 25th, 26th and 27th September. This is very often caused by an item about HE appearing in the
media.
Back-up Team
Andrew has also stepped down as telephone SEN Contact and, to date, we have been unable to replace
him. Denice is still doing email enquiries and so, for the moment, the Helpline team direct enquirers to her
and to the SEN emailing list.
As part of the back-up team we now have a Social Services Support Team consisting of Sinead Hadavi and
Cheryl Moy. Both will need ratification in due course..
We still haven’t found a replacement Flexi-school Contact but there are one or two useful websites and
emailing lists which can be used instead.
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Membership Report for Jan 1, 2011  Jun 17, 2012 From Sarah
Date
Orders Total Items sold
February, 2011
3
3
April, 2011
13
13
May, 2011
86
86
June, 2011
85
86
July, 2011
94
94
August, 2011
76
76
September, 2011
116
116
October, 2011
110
110
November, 2011
106
107
December, 2011
71
74
January, 2012
162
164
February, 2012
116
118
March, 2012
97
99
April, 2012
87
87
May, 2012
110
111
th
June (17 ), 2012
39
39
Revenue
75.00000
218.00000
1460.00000
1480.00000
1586.00000
1244.00000
1996.00000
1852.00000
1655.00000
796.00000
2568.00000
1769.00000
1545.00000
1294.00000
1755.00000
633.00000
[N.B. these are statistics for joining/renewing via website. ‘Orders’ is membership subscription; ‘Items
Sold’ may contain additional cards etc.]
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