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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