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The British Council (the Council) is a Registered Charity, an executive Non-Departmental Public Body and a Public Corporation. It aims to build relationships between people in the UK and other countries, and to increase the appreciation of the UK's creative ideas and learning opportunities, through, for example, teaching English, administering examinations and running cultural projects. It is a globally dispersed organisation, operating in some 110 countries, and directly engages with over 15 million people a year worldwide.
The Council's model for teaching English overseas is based largely on direct teaching by native English speakers, principally in capital cities. It charges premium prices, which restricts its reach to those who can afford its courses. The Council has been slow to develop alternative models, such as partnership working and franchising. It is seeking to employ more teachers for whom English is a second language to help it meet rising demand, and also plans to expand its non-direct teaching to broaden its reach. While the Council is focusing on people who it expects may reach positions of influence in the future, it also runs programmes, such as its School Links project, to work with a wider cross section of society. It does valuable work to sustain relationships in difficult places such as Burma and Zimbabwe.
The Council is moving resources out of Europe and towards the Middle East and Asia, in line with UK international priorities. This has involved closing offices and reducing staff in Europe, and has impacted negatively on staff morale. The Council is also moving from local, country specific projects to larger, regional projects. While it is too early to properly evaluate this shift, there are some indications that regional projects are having a greater impact. The move to regional projects is, however, a factor in the Council's worrying decline in income from sponsorship and partners, which has fallen for seven consecutive years.
The Council is seeing increasing competition in its examinations and teaching work. In India, it has lost two thirds of its market share in the International English Language Testing System since 2002. It is also working with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which provides most of the Council's grant funding, to try and increase the number of overseas students coming to study in UK higher and further education institutions.
In order to try and improve consistency, the Council is moving from 110 separate country operations to management through 12 Regional Directors. Its performance measurement, while generally of a good standard, is not applied in the same way in all regions. Its customer service standards have been low and also vary by region. The Council does not have a single integrated system for logging and managing its customer relationships, but has avoided the temptation to spend money on an IT solution before the problem has been adequately defined.
On the basis of a Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General,[1] we took evidence from the British Council and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the Council's efforts to work with whole societies, how it makes the best use of resources, and its drive to increase consistency across the network.
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