Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
BRITISH COUNCIL
25 MAY 2004
Q100 Chairman: I am talking about the
franchisees.
Mr Kemp: This is a British international
school which is a franchise foreign-owned school.
Q101 Chairman: We know about the international
schools but this is a comparatively different thing. This is the
transplantation of private, fee-paying, British-style public schools
to foreign soil.
Mr Upton: There is a mix. There
is a large body that sends them to these franchised schools and
there is a group that sends them back to the UK because that suits
them more effectively, so there is a mix. To a large extent if
you talk to the parents of these children they would say the key
factor though is if they are going to a Shrewsbury or a Dulwich
is the nature of the student population. If the nature of the
student population is 85% Thai, for example, they might think
seriously sending them back to the UK because for ex-pat parents
what they want is an international experience but a broad-based
one, so it is a challenge for these franchises.
Q102 Chairman: You would not get a very
broad-based experience at a private school anyway, let's face
it!
Mr Upton: Nothing I could comment
on, Chairman.
Q103 Chairman: Maybe you do but I doubt
it.
Mr Upton: Nothing I could comment
on, Chairman!
Chairman: I denied my children the opportunity!
Linda Perham?
Q104 Linda Perham: I am just thinking
of the particular countries that we visited, perhaps South East
Asia and the ASEAN countries in particular. It is that area of
the world where we see quite an expansion of these branches being
set up—you mentioned China—or is it that other countries
will come on-stream and there will be other opportunities, particularly
if we have this competition situation between the US and Australia?
Are there particular opportunities in South East Asia for UK institutions
and schools and universities?
Mr Kemp: Coming to the detail,
looking at it globally, South East Asia is a most competitive
market, as we said earlier, and, yes, there continue to be opportunities.
All our studies indicate that there is a large amount of unsatisfied
demand even in Malaysia, so there remains an opportunity, but
everyone is there and UK institutions are getting more knowledgeable
about the area so perhaps they feel more comfortable. If you are
going to look at two or three global markets that have the biggest
opportunities, you would have to say China and India, because
of income growth and unsatisfied demand in country, and also Eastern
Europe. When we have only got 10 to 15% higher education participation
rates in some East European countries you would have to say there
looks to be potential there, so looking at it globally they are
the sort of things you can imagine happening.
Mr Upton: In the end it depends
on local market conditions, so unlike in Thailand where we have
seen an expansion in the private sector of schools like Dulwich,
Shrewsbury and Harrow, and there continue to be more opening up,
it is not the same in Malaysia. That does not mean to say circumstances
will not change but it is unlikely that we are going to see a
University of Nottingham campus-type approach in Thailand at the
moment although the Americans are interested in investing. So
local market conditions will determine the response as much as
anything else.
Mr Butler: As there is going to
be increased competition, it seems quite clear—and we come
back to our research—Vision 2020—that quality
and recognition of qualifications are absolutely key. If we or
the institution cannot enter into a quality partnership with a
local provider then they are going to lose out and we will as
well.
Q105 Sir Robert Smith: On that quality
image situation, as more and more institutions are on the radar
of people in other countries to explore, what is the danger in
a sense that some not so good institutions in this country get
into the market and damage it for the others that have done so
well up until now?
Mr Kemp: I think UK degrees are
absolutely assured through the QAA procedure. If anyone stepped
outside of it, wherever it was delivered, the primary responsibility
is the awarding institution, QAA, and HEFCE (The Higher Education
Funding Council for England) would come down on them in England,
and similarly in Scotland we get the same. That is the ultimate
sanction. This is something that is a strong selling point for
UK education globally when someone says, "How can you guarantee
the quality?" we can say to them, "It is on the website.
Go and look at the quality reviews." They are all open and
available. They are not in Australia and they are certainly not
in the US. That is a very, very strong selling point.
Mr Upton: Can I just echo that
point. At a recent conference on higher education and quality
assurance in Thailand, members of the European Union were talking
about different models and the UK system was held up as a model
for its transparency and its accessibility and was seen by many
South East Asian countries as the model to follow. It was interesting
with the robust exchange between myself and my colleague from
Ireland who regarded the UK model as very invasive and intrusive,
however, overseas it is regarded as defining, a means of guaranteeing
quality and transparency, and a huge selling point for us.
Mr Butler: A concrete example
of that is in Malaysia where our British Council Director is talking
to the Malaysian qualifications authority in terms of them wanting
to get hold of our expertise in this very area.
Q106 Sir Robert Smith: That is very helpful.
In answer to Mr Berry you talked about how the University of Nottingham
was trying to maintain the intangible benefits we get from higher
education. I remember a constituent (retired now) who used to
work in the Foreign Office who said there were two things he would
keep, if everything else was cancelled, and it would be the World
Service and the British Council from the point of view of promoting
trade. Is it too early yet to measure whether the in-country really
does deliver the same intangible links or do you think that what
they are doing or what other institutions are doing is going to
deliver those intangibles?
Mr Kemp: Do you want to talk about
alumni. The tangible benefit is graduates and where they are going
to and whether they will benefit the UK in the longer term?
Q107 Sir Robert Smith: I am just thinking
when they are educated, the traditional view is if they come here
they are immersed much more in British traditions and culture
and they have got the links and contacts and so on. If it is an
in-country institution—
Mr Kemp: It is not quite the same.
Q108 Sir Robert Smith: But is there some
level?
Mr Upton: As Neil says, if it
is an in-country institution, clearly you will not have the same
intensity of experience. I said to Mr Berry I thought that students
coming to the UK is a win/win situation. The evidence we have
for that is very, very clear. These are people who come back,
they come to positions of influence: they become writers, journalists,
they become the government, and they form a close relationship.
We seek to manage that relationship. We have an alumni base in
Thailand of 10,000 people which means it gives us a whole range
of access, influence and knowledge which we are able to use for
long-term purposes. Some of those are economic, some social, some
political, some cultural and clearly what we seek to do is where
there are in-country institutions we seek to achieve the same
type of relationship. The intensity of the experience is not quite
the same so you have to work harder at it.
Mr Butler: It is interesting because
while the experience is not so intense for students, in terms
of projecting the UK that is actually very, very good. The Campus
University of Nottingham in Malaysia is actually seen by the Malaysian
government and by business in Malaysia as a very positive move
so you have to put that side as well.
Q109 Richard Burden: Can we just return
to the competitors, particularly Australia and the United States.
If I read you correctly you were saying Australia made a really
big push in the mid- to late-1990s. To some extent there has been
a bit of a reply to that post-2000 from the UK. The Americans
are doing quite a lot of aggressive marketing and there is a big
potential for in-country activity which they have not yet exploited.
As far as British institutions are concerned are they being, in
your view, sufficiently entrepreneurial in terms of those other
threats? Is there something they should be doing that they are
not doing?
Mr Kemp: The whole distance learning
franchise business in UK institutions is highly variable. On the
extreme you have got someone like Nottingham who has made it a
definite decision to go out there and it fits within what they
are trying to achieve globally. You have perhaps got that with
Warwick as well. It has then got a long tail in which in many
institutions it is all down to an individual staff member who
has got motivated to do that programme in that country for whatever
reason, so it does lack coherence. It is probably fair to say
that there are a lot of cottage industries out there, some of
which are knitted together very well in some form of alliance,
but there are also a lot of individuals who are vulnerable. I
think the next stage has to be a more rational approach. The problem
for UK institutions—particularly universities and the public
sector institutions—is that this is not their primary purpose.
Their primary purpose is in the UK. It is about providing high-quality
education in a diversified way for UK students. In the main that
is what they are funded to do. So the overseas delivered programme,
entrepreneurial as it is, is something that is not yet finally
embedded in all institutions as helping towards that primary purpose.
Q110 Richard Burden: Given what you said
before about the danger of the quality selling point or reputational
selling point, perhaps if you did get major interventions overseas
in South East Asia from either institutions that do not offer
quality courses or non-quality institutions, that could affect
the rest. Who should be giving the British activity over there
greater coherence?
Mr Kemp: That is a difficult one.
It is not the role of the British Council, even though we work
to market and help them identify markets and look at ways in which
they could put together consortia for particular markets. Obviously
Universities UK from the English university side could have a
strong role in this in pulling it together, and there are groups
within there that are thinking about ways of how this might better
be done.
Q111 Richard Burden: Are you talking
to them about what you can do collectively?
Mr Kemp: We have been talking
to them, very much so. We have been looking at a strategy to follow
up the Prime Minister's Initiative that is finishing this coming
year, that was due for 2005. It is called Positioning for Success,
and the future strategy concerns how we will deal with overseas
delivered programmes but at the same time maintaining the push
for the Education UK brand. The Education UK brand in all of this
is really important as an overarching brand for UK education because
we know that intending students choose country in the main as
their first call, and only after that they will look for institutions,
so we have got to keep working on this brand and it is under that
that we would like to pull together all of the UK offerings.
Mr Upton: Just on that, in-country
experience is that what we are seeing is a lot of niche competition
emerging. Neil was right to identify Australia and the States
but there is also interesting competition emerging from our colleagues
in Europe who are beginning to market which is on an EU basis.
One of the things that makes us very distinctive is that we have
a coherent identity of brand of UK education which we run and
manage and campaign, which provides a doorway of access for higher
education institutions and further education institutions and
it is very defining. That strategic imperative is very important
and therefore it seems to me it is an interesting time when we
are coming to the end of the PMI campaign, which has been very
successful, and at the moment we are still trying to decide if
we are going to have any future investment in terms of the positioning
approach from a marketing campaign.
Mr Butler: This is potentially
quite serious of course because if we cannot promote UK generically—
Q112 Richard Burden: You say "we";
who is the "we" in this? Is it you? Is it Universities
UK? Is it Trade and Investment UK? Is it the Prime Minister?
Mr Kemp: To deliver the Prime
Minister's Initiative we had a steering group that comprised the
sector, so all the universities with representations at senior
level there. Their representational bodies like Universities UK,
SCOP, et cetera, as well as the Association of Colleges, plus
bodies like ourselves, the British Council, plus the DfES, plus
the Home Office and UK Visas, because there is the whole immigration
issue to work round. It is very important that we had that coherent
group to deliver it—UKTI was a key partner as well—all
investing but more importantly ensuring that we were all joined-up.
That worked. What we are looking at is some form of formulation
that could take on a role that has this aspect you are implying
for delivery in-country in a more integrated approach, so "we"
is that sort of grouping. It is UK but both across government
as well as institution.
Q113 Richard Burden: I am just wondering
where you think the initiative for that should come from? Who
is going to say, "Okay, let's get round the table and work
together"?
Mr Butler: I think it is true
to say that the British Council has been leading on this in collaboration
with the key bodies.
Mr Kemp: It has got to be with
the institutions as well.
Q114 Richard Burden: You could take the
initiative?
Mr Kemp: We do. Positioning
for Success has involved the institutions. We have gone out
to every single UK higher education institution as well as the
colleges to get feedback to say how does this stack up. We only
got all the feedback last week and virtually every one of them
has replied, unusually. They are really interested in trying to
take this forward.
Q115 Sir Robert Smith: UK Visas are part
of that team. Do you have any feedback as to how the handling
of visas, maybe for families of overseas students, is affecting
recruitment in the current environment? Anecdotally they seem
to be having more problems.
Mr Kemp: Nick sits on the different
groups within them and I am sure he can answer.
Mr Butler: Obviously going back
to the end of the 1990s it was relatively difficult for students
to get visas, it was very bureaucratic and it took a long time.
With the introduction of the Prime Minister's Initiative and getting
UK Visas (or whatever they were called before) on-board has helped
the situation enormously. The procedures are much more straightforward.
The entry clearance officers have been trained by the British
Council and other Home Office staff in accepting students into
the UK. However, obviously, given the recent arrangements over
visas, there are potentially going to be some delays in students
getting visas. UK Visas and the Home Office are tightening up
on the institutions in the UK and are putting together a register
of accredited education establishments so that after the end of
this current year only students applying to one of those institutions
on the list will get a visa. I do not think it has caused any
significant delay in the issuing of visas up to the current moment,
although it is an area we are monitoring.
Q116 Chairman: Would you concede that,
because the issuing of visas as it is done in-country, that British
Council representation is quite important in getting the message
across to the people who issue or refuse the visas? One of the
frustrations we have as Members of Parliament is that in particular
parts of the world we know that there is sometimes an unnecessarily
obstructive and restrictive approach to this. Whilst that may
be understandable in the circumstances of people who are not coming
to do academic work (what they are doing might be equally significant
but nonetheless it is not academic) in the area of academic work
you find that people come to you and say, "Look, we are getting
trouble with this man or woman who is not issuing us with visas,"
and sometimes it is down to individuals as we have identified.
Mr Butler: We have worked very
hard with UK Visas, not only in the UK but with our colleagues
overseas, to explain the procedures for students and perhaps to
explain that this institution is a bona fide college or
is a university, because of course there have been enormous changes
in the education system over the last few years, and I think on
the whole we get that message across and I know that in many,
many countries visa officers will go to the Council if they have
a doubt about an institution or a particular course, and we are
there to help them out. That is not to say there are not individual
entry clearance officers who have a very interesting way of dealing
with visas.
Mr Upton: That makes the point
about making sure that we have good relationships which provide
support and there is a good partnership between the Embassy visa
section and the Council so that where there are individual cases
of misunderstandings about the nature of the institution we can
normally clear those up very, very quickly, so it is a very good
partnership, I have to say.
Q117 Judy Mallaber: You gave us a breakdown
earlier of the main subject areas that ASEAN students wish to
study. Can you say something about the opportunities for professional
education. You mentioned law but I was not clear whether this
was for a legal qualification or for a standard law degree. In
general, what opportunities are open for developing professional
education?
Mr Kemp: I was making a note when
you were saying that on this very point. There are large numbers
of students particularly from South East Asia coming to the UK
to study professional qualifications—law, accounting, finance,
a whole range of areas around business—in private sector
institutions, institutions that could be run by the profession
themselves, for instance, the accountancy profession, ACCA, the
Chartered Institute of Marketing, Management Accountants, and
all of these are very large and active bodies. They are also active
in delivering overseas. Inwards to the UK it is difficult to estimate
numbers but there are probably double the number of students coming
into higher education, coming here to study some form of professional
programme.
Q118 Judy Mallaber: How do they go about
that? What institutions are they attached to when they arrive?
How is that organised when they come?
Mr Kemp: The institutions are
active in countries, they have agents, they have marketing, they
have web-based marketing, they have agents, they do presentations.
Q119 Judy Mallaber: If you are studying
to be an accountant over here who do you go to? What organisation
are you attached to? Where would you be?
Mr Kemp: There are several colleges
in central London that offer private accountancy qualifications.
Why you triggered that off was over the visa issue. We have less
of a problem in the higher education and formal FE sector. The
problem on visas, as Nick was implying, is with these private
sector institutions who in the main are not registered in the
same way as the public sector ones, and again you have got highly
reputable ones who are doing validated degrees and professional
qualifications that are absolutely bona fide again with
a very long tail of ones that the Home Office is worried about.
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