Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual Report 2007-08 - Foreign Affairs Committee Contents


Further memorandum from the British Council

HIGH PRIORITY REGIONS

Q:  Your audience engagement did not increase in the Middle East in 2007-08. 2008-09 will be the first year for which you will see significant retargeting of resources to the region. What score do you expect to achieve on audience engagement then?

British Council Response:

  We have shifted resources into countries across the Middle East and Near East and North Africa (Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen and Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestinian Territories).

  Alongside this shift, we are seeking new ways to target and reach priority young audiences across these regions, including increasing our on-line activity. As a result, our total audience figures for 2008-09 will grow to between four and 4.5 million, up from three million in 2007-08.

  Initially forecasting an uplift in our direct engagement for 2008-09, we have revised these figures in light of the global downturn and a reduction on the purchasing power of our grant. We now expect to achieve direct engagement with 1.6 million people across both regions, in line with last year's figures. This year we expanded our Connecting Classrooms project building links between schools, teachers and pupils in the UK and Saudi Arabia and Iraq. In addition we are scaling up our work in Algeria, particularly in English language and piloting new approaches with Algerian partners.

  We are increasingly taking a more targeted approach to direct engagement, identifying and reaching current and future influencers in societies and communities. Such activity provides a greater opportunity to build trust and engagement for the UK, as in, for example, our programme to improve the quality of English-language teaching for student imams at Al Azhar University in Cairo and Spring board, a five year leadership development programme reaching 10,000 women working in education in Saudi Arabia.

Q:  How are your pilot teaching models in India progressing? Do you think that they will lead to the provision of cheaper English places in highest priority regions?

British Council Response:

  We have well developed plans to open a further nine teaching centres by December 2012, which will provide training for 72,000 students a year (8,000 per centre). The first centre will open in Chennai in March 2009 followed by Kolkata by December 2009, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad by March 2010, Pune and Chandigarh by December 2011, and Bangalore and Mumbai by end 2012.

  The centres will be staffed with local teachers who meet our high teaching standards. This teaching centre model will allow us to reduce fees and provide cheaper English places. The first centre will open in Chennai in March 2009 followed by a further three other by the end of 2010.

  In addition, we are working closely with bodies such as the KPMG Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation to develop and deliver cost-free learning in under-privileged communities.

  Demand for English-language teaching is high across India and not one that we will meet through using our grant-in-aid alone. For this reason we are developing new models of teaching in India which support State Government's English teaching and provide as many people as possible with a high quality, self-sustaining and affordable learning environment and a window on to the UK. For example, our teacher-training programme will reach 750,000 teachers and well over seven million students over five years.

CHANGE PROGRAMME AND STAFF

Q:  A recent staff survey showed that your staff are not satisfied with the way change is being managed. What are you doing about this?

British Council Response:

  The September update to our January 2008 survey shows improvement in a number of areas, including:

    —  a nine percentage point increase in staff linking what they do to the British Council's success; and

    —  a nine percentage point increase to how regional leadership communicates a clear vision.

  We believe that a large part of the improvement of this survey stems from the launch of our new vision and purpose following a sustained effort by the Executive Board to articulate what we do, as well as the introduction of a new approach to performance management to support all staff in leading and delivering change.

Q:  Why have there been particular difficulties with staff morale in the arts group?

British Council Response:

  There were two principal reasons for this. The first was a proposal in December 2007 for internal restructuring, which was misrepresented in the press as an intention to close down art-form departments. The second was an unintended consequence of our shift to large-scale global programmes which meant that specialist arts staff felt they had fewer opportunities directly to influence the quality, quantity and impact of arts work overseas.

  In response, we launched a consultation with the UK arts sector at the start of the year, which reaffirmed the fundamental role and value of our arts work. We published an Arts Action Plan which makes clear we will:

    —  increase our global arts spend to £30 million by the end of the 2009-10 financial year;

    —  retain our internal art-form expertise (we have also added a new-media function and established specialist posts in Cardiff and Edinburgh in addition to the existing one in Belfast);

    —  reinforce our international network of professional arts experts and re-establish an external advisory board; and

    —  establish a set of criteria for future investment in arts work which acknowledges the central importance of specialist advice and judgement, whilst making clear that the content of such work will relate to the British Council's strategic purpose.

VALUE FOR MONEY

Q:  To what extent have you acted on the NAO's recommendations about project management in the British Council?

Q:  Do you have any plans to introduce standard documentation for local projects?

British Council Response:

  We agree with the need to raise the consistency of project management across the British Council. However, having taken expert external advice, we have concluded that a simple off-the-shelf project management system, such as MSP or Prince 2, would not be appropriate for the management of international cultural relations projects. We are therefore developing a project management system which will meet the variable needs of consistent project management across 110 countries and in a relatively wide range of sector specialisms.

  In the meantime, we are making progress on all features of our new commissioning process and approach to project management:

    —  we have produced detailed guidance on the project plans that should be submitted at each stage of the project lifecycle (readily available on our intranet). The intranet pages include details of all project proposals that have been submitted and the decision reached on each by the decision panels, as a way of sharing good practice and as a guide to those who are drafting proposals;

    —  consistent corporate guidance on project governance is being developed by the Contracts and Projects Delivery team and will be rolled out across the UK and overseas network during 2009-10. This will include clear lines of responsibility and accountability for key roles like the project owner, project manager and country or UK project delivery teams;

    —  an enhanced planning, reporting and monitoring system will be used in developing plans for 2009-10. This will enable project managers to plan resources for their projects globally. A new standard costing model will be introduced to ensure that staff resources are planned and budgeted consistently across the network; and

    —  funding is only released for large-scale, regional projects once a proposal has been scrutinised by the Commissioning Office and approved by a formal decision panel at the appropriate stage-gate.

  Following the roll out of a single corporate approach to large scale programme and project management, the British Council will introduce a suitably light, flexible process for planning and delivery of local projects. This will include appropriate templates and guidance.

Q:  Why has external funding from partners and sponsors declined since 2001? Are you going to put in place a corporate target to restore external funding to 2001 levels?

British Council Response:

  The 2001 figures represent a significant spike in activity. Our most recent accounts (at 31 October 2008) recognise £21 million of partnership funding for this year. Our partnership funding targets were raised from £41 million in 2007-08 to £49 million for 2008-09; however we have to recognise the increasing difficulty in the current economic climate of achieving these targets.

Q:  What are you doing to improve your estate management following the criticisms made by the NAO?

  We accept the need for a greater level of overseas estates management, and are looking for the most cost effective structure to do this. In addition, we are increasing specialist expertise in London and improving the quality and consistency of information we hold about our overseas estate and our capacity to manage it locally.

CSR 07 SETTLEMENT

Q:  Your memorandum states that your flat cash settlement for the CSR07 period has presented you with some "operating challenges". What are these and do they concern security?

  The "flat cash" settlement in the Spending Review will require us to make annual savings of £18.2 million from our grant by 2011. In the main these will be achieved through "back office" savings (creating shared service centres, exploiting our new business and finance system, improvements in procurement and taking further costs out of our support services globally). However, £1.9 million will come from reducing our grant activities in Europe and £4.3 million will be taken out of the overseas network by reducing public access and probably some office closures.

  On top of this, CSR07 saw the removal of the Overseas Price Mechanism, through which organisations exposed to overseas exchange rates and inflation sought relief. As a result of the weakening pound and, to a lesser extent, overseas inflation, we estimate that the purchasing power of our grant has reduced by about £10 million in 2008-09 which we will need to find by reducing either our cost base or operational funds. We continue to take the necessary prudent measures to manage much of the on-going risk; however the extent of the current economic situation requires significant in-year cuts. This will almost certainly mean postponing or abandoning some operational activity.

  On security, our policy is "to discharge our duty of care to staff, customers and visitors by taking all reasonable measures in respect of all known and foreseeable risks". We do not compromise on this, but the increasing costs of security in some countries will call into question whether it is still cost effective to maintain our operations in those countries.

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY BOARD

Q:  To what extent is the Public Diplomacy Board directing public diplomacy work on the ground?

  The Public Diplomacy Board has been testing different approaches to public diplomacy running two-year pilots on climate security, democratic development and the UK economy. The pilots are now in their second year and have lead to more joined-up strategy development between the British Council and the FCO.

  This is consistent with the aim of the Public Diplomacy Board, which is to improve the effectiveness of public diplomacy by setting the strategic direction of UK public diplomacy, monitoring and evaluating the outcomes and making recommendations on resource allocation.

Q:  What progress is the Public Diplomacy Board making on a new framework for evaluating public diplomacy?

  Three new impact evaluation tools have been developed by the British Council and the FCO with input from the BBC World Service. One tool is tracking how "influencers" have been affected by what we do; another is tracking media coverage; and the third is tracking concrete outcomes.





 
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Prepared 8 February 2009