This section brings together our guidance, reports, key decisions and other resources that could help trustees understand the scope of ‘the advancement of education’.

What is meant by ‘the advancement of education’?

1. Charity law gives a wide meaning to education and does not limit it to education in a classroom environment.

2. To be a charitable aim for the public benefit, education must be capable of being ‘advanced’. This means to promote, sustain and increase individual and collective knowledge and understanding of specific areas of study, skills and expertise.

3. Today, education includes:

• formal education;
• community education;
• physical education and development of young people;
• training (including vocational training) and life-long learning;
• research and adding to collective knowledge and understanding of specific areas of study and expertise;
• the development of individual capabilities, competences, skills and understanding.

4. The types of charities that are capable of advancing education include;

• education establishments such as schools, colleges and universities;
• organisations supporting the work of education establishments, or associated with them, such as parent-teacher organisations, prize funds, standard-setting organisations, teacher training organisations, student unions, examinations boards;
• pre-schools and out-of-school education such as playgroups, Saturday schools, summer schools, homework clubs;
• organisations that support they physical education of young people such as youth sporting facilities;
• organisations providing life skills training such as the Duke of Edinburgh award schemes, Scouts and Guides, Woodcraft Folk;
• research foundations and think tanks;
• learned societies such as the Royal Geographical Society;
• museums, galleries, libraries, scientific institutes;
• organisations which fund people’s education;
• organisations that educate the public in a particular subject, for instance in human rights, climate change, physics, personal financial management;
• information media such as the internet, radio, television, libraries, information centres, university presses, seminars, conferences and lectures.

Charity Commission guidance

The Advancement of Education for the Public Benefit

This guidance explains the meaning of the advancement of education. It also includes supplementary public benefit guidance for charities whose aims include the advancement of education.

 

Related decisions of the Commission

The Countryside Alliance Foundation

The decision concerns an initiative of The Countryside Alliance (a campaigning organisation for those interested in the countryside and the rural way of life) which wanted to separate out and carry on the ‘charitable activities’ of the Alliance through the Foundation.

The decision considers concerns about whether the education and research may not be neutral but rather promote a particular point of view and whether the private benefit to local producers and food retailers and others may be more than ancillary and incidental.

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Crawley Model Railway Society ("the Society")

Review of a decision concerning an application for charitable status of an organisation which had objects to advance the education of the public in railways, railway modelling and allied pursuits.

After taking into consideration the quality and extent of the totality of the Society’s activities, the Commissioners considered that they were not sufficiently educational for them to conclude that the Society was established for educational purposes. In addition, on balance, the poise of the Society was focused on the enjoyment and pleasure of the members and the recruitment of new members and therefore public benefit was not established. The Society was not charitable.

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Ethnic-English Trust and Ironside Community Trust

Review of decisions to reject applications for registration from two companies established to benefit “ethnic English” people (as variously defined).

Background information raised considerable doubts about whether the companies would further their educational and research objects in a balanced, non-propagandist manner (as required by charity law), in view of the applicants’ known political links. The Members of the Commission concluded that the applicants had not demonstrated that the companies’ objects were for the public benefit, and so the companies could not be registered as charities.

The decision:

• illustrates the effect of section 34(1) of the Race Relations Act 1976 (which requires colour restrictions in charitable instruments to be disregarded);
• affirms that the principle of benignant construction does not apply in relation to companies; and
• sets out the legal basis for considering background information (in relation to both purposes and public benefit) when considering status cases.

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Millennium College

Review of a decision concerning the charitable status of an organisation with objects to advance education using information technology and promote a multi–disciplinary approach to learning and study.

The decision includes consideration of what advancing education in the charity law sense means and extends to in modern society.

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See also:

Living in Radiance