Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-108)
MR DAVID
GREEN, DR
NEIL KEMP
AND MR
NICK BUTLER
7 JUNE 2004
Q100 Chairman: On the point that David
brought out, just to finish on this, as you were speaking—it
is not that I want the Government to privatise you—and in
one of the questions I asked you very early on I thought it was
123 higher education institutions and you gave me a figure of
180, were you not getting to the point that you need a better
marketing organisation that does not get embarrassed because they
are hard-nosed, they are looking for students, they are bringing
them to the UK? In a sense you were saying, "It is quite
awkward for us. We would not really be the British Council if
we were given a percentage on every student we attracted".
Could you not get rid of that discomfort by encouraging the Government
to stimulate a new organisation funded by all the universities
dipping into their pockets, a much more single-minded aggressive
marketing organisation that could work in harness with you and
save you the embarrassment of being too commercial?
Mr Green: That has been mooted
from time to time over the years and I have had discussions on
that very subject. I do not think we feel uncomfortable about
it. All I was trying to say was we are not a marketing organisation
per se, that is not our remit, but this programme is about
marketing and that is one element of the British Council.
Q101 Chairman: You are not professional
marketers. I have been reading through your CVs. You have wonderful
CVs but you are not professional marketers.
Mr Green: The staff who are involved
in this area have become professional marketers and we have invested
a great deal in the training and development of those staff. We
have put several hundred of them through marketing qualifications
in order to enable them to do their work more professionally.
I do not have a marketing background but there are many of my
colleagues in the British Council who do need to have that area
of expertise.
Q102 Chairman: Do you hire in marketing,
branding people as and when?
Mr Green: Of course. Certainly
the Education UK brand was something that was professionally developed
using professional marketers and specialists in both the country
and brand related to education. We would bring that in in the
same way that we would bring in other expertise in other areas
of our work. I do not think there is a level of discomfort and
actually if you asked the educational institutions, if you asked
UUK or AOC they would say that the system works very, very, well
and that there is something very attractive about a non-commercial
organisation, or primarily non-commercial organisation, doing
this role for them because the students do then perceive that
they are getting more independent advice and they are getting
advice from an organisation which is not just about the bottom
line and about profit. I think that I am right, or I hope I am
right, in saying that the institutions and the sector are satisfied
that this is the best solution for the time being.
Dr Kemp: An interesting observation
is from IDP Education Australia, who spent a lot of time talking
with. The Chief Executive there keeps saying, "Do you know,
we would love to be like the British Council, to have that wider
remit that is involved in education at all levels, whether it
be secondary school exchanges, school links, partnerships at university
level. We are like you on the marketing side", and they have
exactly the same sort of marketing teams for this as us, "but
we would love the profile that that wider remit would give us
as an organisation".
Mr Green: This is the frustration
of the Goethe-Institut, that they do not have this responsibility;
there is a separate organisation that is responsible for the international
recruitment element in Germany. I think one of the real strengths
of the British Council is the fact that it is so wide-ranging
in terms of its range of activities, from cultural exchange in
visual arts, in performing arts, in English language teaching,
in science, in human rights, in development work, the whole gamut.
There is no other organisation in the world that has that breadth
of definition of cultural relations and that is tremendously to
the UK's benefit and it is the right way of doing things.
Q103 Paul Holmes: In the last two hours
you have given three reasons why bringing international students
into the UK is worthwhile: (1) it earns a lot of money; (2) its
spreads education into the developing world; and, (3) it wins
the hearts and minds of people who in the future will be the leading
lights in their countries. You have also said that to do all that
they must get a quality experience otherwise it is going to be
counterproductive. One of the areas that brings in international
students is English language teaching and, for example, that brings
in about £1.3 billion to this country, but there are concerns
about the quality in that area sometimes. You issued a report
in March this year[12]
and you said there is no specific mandatory regulatory regime
and the accreditation scheme that you run is purely voluntary.
What are the concerns about quality in English language teaching
and how would you deal with them?
Mr Green: Can I suggest that Nick
Butler answers that because that is his specialist area.
Mr Butler: As we have alluded
to already, at the present moment we are working together with
the Home Office and the DfES on this area. The report that you
saw that came out earlier this year, and a further report which
we commissioned looking into the actual number of non-accredited
ELT institutions which came out at about the same time,[13]
indicated that there are concerns in this area. This is coupled
with the concerns from the Home Office in particular that have
come from all sides and we have identified that there are issues
that we need to resolve. As I said, the DfES and the Home Office
are putting together some proposals to set up a definitive list
of accredited institutions, hopefully by the end of this year.
There is still the issue of deciding exactly what an accredited
institution means and what sort of criteria will be used, but
certainly this is something that is very much in our minds and
I have a meeting tomorrow morning to discuss this further. What
is happening is not just related to English language teaching,
it is also looking at the whole of the private training sector
because there are a number of private training providers about
whom there are some concerns as well. For the first time the UK
Government, together with representative bodies, is facing this
issue and trying to set out a register of all the appropriate
educational providers so that when students are applying to those
institutions, they will not get a visa unless they are applying
to a registered institution.
Q104 Paul Holmes: There seem to be three
separate concerns. One is educational quality and you also hinted
in the March report at security concerns and immigration concerns.
Can you say something about the three separate areas?
Mr Butler: The security concerns
are more related to the issue of minors where there is not sufficient
legislation at the present moment to safeguard minors who are
in the UK at the present moment. They are normally coming for
short periods of time to ELT institutions and we do recommend
that the Government looks at this area in quite some detail. In
terms of the immigration, as I have mentioned before, we have
looked at some of the issues concerned. There is concern in some
quarters that bogus students are coming into the country and not
attending the courses for which they have obtained a visa and
are going off into the black economy. We hope that the proposals
which the Home Office will be putting forward shortly to track
students who have gone missing will solve that problem on the
whole. We are working closely with UUK and the Association of
Colleges in this area and I think we are fairly close to seeing
some concrete proposals in this area.
Q105 Paul Holmes: On the educational
quality side?
Mr Butler: Certainly from the
British Council's point of view we are absolutely convinced that
if we cannot provide a certification of quality for the UK we
are going to lose out. We are very concerned that we ensure that
all institutions, be they ELT or private training providers, do
have some form of quality mark. Again, we are working with the
DfES and the Home Office to try and identify a way of doing that
for the future.
Q106 Paul Holmes: Have you any thoughts
on how you would accredit that? Is this another extension of the
Ofsted empire?
Mr Butler: As you know, we have
a voluntary scheme already, we have a team of inspectors working
there. It is never that difficult to identify inspectors because
Ofsted have made some of their inspectors more and more available,
I believe. It is an area that we will need to look at in some
detail but in the mid-term it is something that the British Council,
together with the other government departments, will be able to
put in place.
Q107 Chairman: So who will do it? Who
will be the regulatory authority?
Mr Butler: This is what is being
considered at the moment. As far as I am aware, the DfES are putting
together a register of education establishments and the Home Office
are looking into ways of tracking students. I think they would
like to do this with the support of the British Council, the AOC,
and Universities UK. We have not got concrete proposals as to
who will be the responsible body for this yet.
Q108 Chairman: This has been a very good
session. Is there anything you want to tell us before you leave
or is there anything you thought we should have asked you but
have not asked you that you wanted to tell the Committee?
Mr Green: I just want to pick
up on a point that Barry made. We are not primarily interested
in the revenue generation of international recruitment, important
though that is. As someone pointed out, we said in our press release
that it could put the UK economy at risk. [14]I
want to stress in conclusion that our real interest in international
recruitment is in terms of winning long term friends for the UK.
I think back to the innumerable times when I have talked to people
overseas who have studied in the UK, whether short term or long
term, and it is such an important experience to them and it does
mean that we have built friendships which are long-lasting, they
want then to send their children to the UK for education if they
can, and they promote it amongst their circles. In terms of building
mutual respect and understanding for the long term prosperity
and peace of the world, which is basically what the British Council
is all about, then there is nothing more important. I slightly
regret that we have focused on the income generation side at the
expense of the really important element which is about building
friendships which are long term.
Chairman: In part that is the Committee's
responsibility and fault in the sense that we started on the narrowness
of your report specifically because we are interested in that
and, of course, as the conversations and the questions developed
what we found was that perhaps we should have started back at
base. We have not had you in front of the Committee before, certainly
in the three years that I have been Chairman. In one sense
you are accountable to this committee and to Parliament because
you get a budget from the Department for Education and Skills.
We have been remiss because we have not had you before. Let us
make it a regular occasion. We have enjoyed it and learnt a lot
for this pertinent inquiry. Thank you very much.
14 Note: See British Council press notice,
20 April 2004, UK Economy at Risk, Warns British Council (Not
printed).
12 Note: See British Council: Regulation
of Private English Language Teaching Institutions: Institute of
Advanced Legal Studies, March 2004. Back
13
Note: See British Council: Regulation of Private English
Language Teaching Institutions: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies,
March 2004. Back
14
Note: See British Council press notice, 20 April 2004,
UK Economy at Risk, Warns British Council (Not printed). Back
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