Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR DAVID
GREEN, DR
NEIL KEMP
AND MR
NICK BUTLER
7 JUNE 2004
Q80 Mr Chaytor: You mentioned the area
of preparation for HE. Are there other areas in FE that are exhibiting
stronger group trends?
Mr Kemp: Yes, and in particular
in relation to Europe. This is an area where we might see more
and more happening, particularly with the new states. Ultimately
there is going to be growth out there in the other countries and
we are doing a lot of work, for example, on basic technical and
vocational skills in South Africa, but that is because we are
willing to intervene and have to invest in that. It is not an
easy area.
Q81 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask generally about
the strategies that you think will be important in continuing
to recruit students across the board, HE, FE or English language
students? You quoted a figure earlier of Australia investing £44
million. What are they investing it in? Is this all in marketing
and open days and glossy literature and websites? What is the
thrust of the Australian strategy to increase their recruitment
and are you intending to replicate that or do you have a different
approach?
Mr Kemp: It is a mix. Yes, they
have developed the Australian brand and I am sure there is a kangaroo
somewhere in the middle of it. Yes, they are investing in marketing
and areas related to that, but the other thing they are doing
is more scholarships. They are investing in scholarships because
that makes a strong statement even in their markets for supporting
basic needs as well as investing money to promote collaboration
between Australian institutions and overseas institutions. It
is a more comprehensive approach and that is why it has cost that
much more. What we have just suggested here is purely on the market
side.
Q82 Mr Chaytor: So your bid to the CSR
of £3 million is entirely on marketing?
Mr Kemp: Yes.
Q83 Mr Chaytor: How do students tend
to come? How are they recruited in the days of the Internet? Do
students in Malaysia or China go to open days or is it direct
mail shot or is it word of mouth, or do they just log on to the
Internet and www.lse.ac.uk?
Mr Kemp: www.educationuk.org.
Q84 Mr Chaytor: Do they tend to go to
individual universities direct or do you function as a kind of
clearing house? What is the balance there?
Mr Green: There has been a huge
increase in the use of the Internet in order to find out about
courses but we are still finding that most students want to talk
to someone before they make a decision, so although they find
out the information through Education UK they then usually come
into the British Council office and want to discuss the course
and we then help them with advice about getting a visa and all
the aspects of coming to the UK. We have done a lot of work on
welcome to the UK and giving them information in advance about
what it is going to be like to live in the UK. Education fairs
are still very important though. We are still running a number
of education fairs, particularly in South East Asia and the Far
East, and those are very well attended by individual institutions,
HE, FE and ELT, and also secondary schools increasingly. That
is still very popular, but increasingly the use of the web—and
you have heard the figure of four million visitors each year—is
going to be a growing source of information.
Q85 Mr Chaytor: But the British Council
is not functioning as a formal clearing house? You operate indirectly
with advice and so on?
Mr Green: Yes, and it is purely
counselling.
Q86 Mr Chaytor: Is this the way it should
work or do you think there is an argument, given the issues of
quality and simply access to information, about what individual
universities do and the status of individual courses? Is there
a case for a stronger clearing house or do you think the growth
of the net will make it more likely that students will increasingly
go direct to the university of their choice?
Mr Kemp: We have investigated
in great detail what our role should be in supporting UK universities.
The Australian approach through their own IDP Education Australia
is that they act as a recruiting agent and they get paid commission
by the universities. They are a company that is 100% owned by
all Australian universities, so they are acting as an agent out
there in the field recruiting and clearing and sending back. We
looked at this with the UK universities and the feedback we got
was most strong that the UK universities believe that we would
lose our neutral British Council position in representing the
totality of the sector even-handedly if we suddenly began to realise
that we would get a commission on every student recruited and
therefore handled. As the British Council we saw our role as about
encouraging outreach through the web, working with agents in countries
and a whole range of different ways. There are no two ways about
it: if we had gone down the Australian route charging the commission
they do our annual revenue would have been about £30 million
for handling this and we probably would not be having the discussion
with the CSR or anyone else.
Q87 Mr Chaytor: But five years on, if
it appears that our targets are in the realm of the pessimistic
scenario and the Australians' are zooming ahead, would you revisit
this or not?
Mr Kemp: We would have to.
Q88 Mr Chaytor: You have not set your
face against this?
Mr Kemp: Absolutely not. There
is a variety of means of funding on this. There is the core funding
if government wants to have a role in this, whether it is trade,
Foreign Office or education policy. There are the institutions
themselves that are directly involved. It is how much they would
wish to invest in it. We are not saying there should be any prescribed
approach because it is going to change, but there has to be some
form of strategic investment there.
Q89 Chairman: Is the Australian basis
a private company limited by guarantee or something like that?
Mr Kemp: Yes, but fully owned
by all the Australian universities.
Mr Chaytor: It is a very British way
of doing it, the way we are doing it, is it not? They are adopting
a more aggressive and direct approach which today seems to have
paid dividends for them.
Q90 Chairman: Are you just a bunch of
amateurs?
Mr Green: The figures demonstrate
that we are not a bunch of amateurs and to achieve the sort of
growth in numbers that has been achieved, which is well in excess
of what Australia has achieved, demonstrates that.
Q91 Chairman: Is that because of you
or in spite of you?
Mr Green: I think it is because
of—well, I would say that, wouldn't I? I think the sector
and the DfES and certainly Universities UK and individual
institutions recognise the role the British Council has played
but we are only one member of the team and it has been very much
a team effort which has involved all the different players.
Q92 Chairman: What sort of animal are
you as an organisation? How would you describe yourself? Are you
a nationalised industry? Are you a quango? How do you think of
yourselves?
Mr Green: We are complex. We are
a non-departmental public body, an NDPB, but we are also a charity.
We have an independent board which is chaired currently by Helena
Kennedy and will from November be chaired by Neil Kinnock. We
are a different sort of organisation from IDP Australia.
Q93 Chairman: You are a different sort
of organisation from almost anything I can think of.
Mr Green: We are. We are a unique
organisation, and even the other cultural relations organisations
such as the Goetre Institute and the Alliance Française
are very differently constructed and are more allied to their
governments than we are. We have an arm's length relationship
with government which I think means that we are able to do more
than those institutions are. It would change the relationship
with the British Council if we were there gaining commission on
each place and so if it was identified that that was going to
be the most effective way of doing that, that might not be a role
for the British Council. That might be another body that was constructed
to do that. There are difficulties in us playing that sort of
less than even-handed role.
Q94 Mr Chaytor: There is an issue, is
there not? If, as we move towards the end of the decade, the divergence
between the rate of growth in recruitment of the UK and Australia
or Canada is getting larger, where does the accountability lie
and where does the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State of
the day, then point the finger? Who is responsible for not matching
the Australian rate of improvement? Is it Universities UK? Is
it individual universities? Is it the British Council? The British
way in which we do it does allow things to fall between several
stools, does it not?
Mr Green: As I understand it,
accountability lies with the DfES. Our responsibility as the British
Council is to manage the marketing element, so we would be held
accountable in relation to the marketing through Education UK.
Again, just to get the figures into perspective, the Australian
market share is less than 10%, ours is in excess of 20%.
Mr Butler: In the last figures
for which we have full statistics, 2002-03, the percentage increase
of higher educated students was 23%. That is quite a significant
number and I think it can be linked back to the efforts by all
the Government departments and the British Council in marketing
the UK.
Q95 Chairman: This is not to try and
undermine the reputation of the British Council at all, because
you know I hold it in high esteem, but how did you survive through
all the Thatcher years not being privatised? Just listening to
what you say, you are a marketing organisation, why do you think
someone did not come along and say "Come on"? Why is
a government arm's length department doing this? Why not the private
sector?
Mr Green: Because we are not a
marketing organisation, we are—
Q96 Chairman: You just said your job
was marketing.
Mr Green: For the Prime Minister's,
that was an Education UK marketing campaign that we managed but
the role of the British Council is to build mutually beneficial
relationships over the long-term with people from the UK and people
in other countries. That is our mission as an organisation. This
is one element of it. Why we have survived—
Q97 Chairman: Why could a private sector
company not do that just as well?
Mr Green: I do not think the private
sector could begin to do it in the same way that the British Council
can do it. One of our strengths as an organisation is the fact
that we are a non-government organisation essentially. We are
an NDPB, a non-departmental public body. Essentially we are a
body which is going to be attractive to individuals overseas and
also to NGOs, to civil society, because of the fact that we operate
at arm's length from government. I think we get the best of both
worlds. We work very closely with the Foreign Office but we are
also independent of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and that
enables us to work in areas like human rights and governance areas
and work in terms of educational reform in a way that a government
department would not be able to do in certain circumstances.
Q98 Chairman: If you go back to Val's
point, one of the things when Neil and I had a relationship with
Swansea University a long time ago was that in those days a very
high percentage of students who came to this country came from
poor countries and very often from poorer backgrounds. Here we
are talking about this wonderful expansion of people coming to
this country, which is an enormous income and it is very exciting
that that potential is there, but, apart from a few scholarships,
predominantly is it going to be wealthy people from wealthy countries
or wealthy people from a wealthy group in a particular country?
Is that where we are? Have we gone back at all to the pre-1979
situation where we got more people coming from around the world
from poorer backgrounds and poorer countries?
Mr Green: I think the points that
Nick Butler made in terms of those countries, such as India and
China, are well made. Although those students are fee paying students,
they are able to have an impact when they go back to their own
countries, but it is fair to say that the programmes the British
Council was asked to administer for the then Overseas Development
Administration, the Technical Co-operation Training, TCT training,
were huge and we were bringing something in the region of—
Dr Kemp: 12,000.
Mr Green: —12,000 students
a year. A change in policy by the Overseas Development Administration,
subsequently the International Development Department, has meant
there has been a very, very significant fall-off of that group
and they were, of course, targeted to developing countries. In
that sense you are right, that element of the work that we were
doing, which I think was very, very valuable work, has gone. That
is because of changed priorities by that department.
Q99 Chairman: Would you like to see your
capacity to do that sort of work again enhanced?
Mr Green: Yes, although I do not
think it is always necessary to bring them to the UK. There is
much that can be done, particularly if we are talking about Africa,
on a regional basis in Africa. I think the days of bringing people
into the UK for teacher training is not necessarily the right
solution, there are ways in which one can do that more effectively
in-country or within the region. There is still tremendous scope
and need for that. One of the areas that we are working in is
through our Knowledge and Learning Centres, and we have just recently
opened one in Accra in Ghana and we have one in South Africa,
which does enable people to receive training and to discuss issues
of concern to those people in those countries through video conferencing.
That is a very powerful means and one that we work with the World
Bank on through their Global Development Learning Network. We
are able to undertake a number of teacher training programmes
and also work with health professionals and education professionals
to link those to people in other countries. Yes, I think there
is a role for more investment in human development in those countries
that we have referred to and the British Council can play a more
significant role than it is already doing, although there are
a number of programmes that I could outline where we are working
to that end, such as the Leadership Programme in Africa that I
referred to.
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