The Language Business

An Evil Corporation?

We have already reported on the damage experienced by Levant Education as a result of collaborating with the British Council in Azerbaijan. Well, the British Council actions there have had much the same effect on David Mitchell of Levant as their similar unprincipled actions in the case of my business had on me. And would have on anybody whose business depends on international education and who runs into the organisation. Suddenly the scales fall from your eyes and you see what bollocks the stance of the organisation is. It does not help British interests, it helps itself, and frankly has no other purpose. What it also has to do is keep enough things going (i.e. keep the millions from the taxpayer) to keep the Charity Commission happy (not hard when that organisation can describe a monumental tax avoidance scheme as a charity) and of course pull the wool over the eyes of the various committees in Parliament, which is clearly a piece of cake.

It's a really good article - please read it.

 PS. Here's a ready made case in today's news of how easy it is to fool the soft heads in Parliament. Eric Pickles has simply parroted a line he has been fed by the British Council that says "British Council had trained nearly one million English language teachers covering over 17 million aspirational Indians". What Mr Pickles might do next is ask himself how this wretched organisation has managed to train about 25 times as many teachers as the entire HE sector in the UK manages each year, and then why these one million new teachers in India can apparently manage only 17 students each. As long as politicians can be relied on to keep their mouths so far ahead of their brains, the British Council will be laughing.

 

BC Pakistan dubbed "reckless and insensitive"

It's basically another exams cock-up or "security breach". And students in Pakistan who took the exams a month ago are understandably unamused that they will have to take the exams again - after booking holidays, getting rid of the course books etc.

The explanation provided by the British Council spokesman is as follows:

When contacted, Shahid Ashraf from the British Council said the paper was leaked due to time difference of exam conducted in Pakistan and other countries. He said that same paper is conducted across the world, which is a major reason of security breach outside Pakistan.

Doh! Time difference. Now why didn't I think of that? The same paper is conducted across the world. "A major reason of security breach". You can't beat hindsight. If that is policy then the British Council have just had an overdue wake-up call. People are in touch worldwide 24/7 so enterprising exam students can share information and assist other students who are in a different time zone. Somebody write a memo.

But hang on a minute, look at the subjects of the exam papers: Islamiyat and Pakistan Studies. Now maybe I'm being a little blinkered here, but my wild guess would be that most students of Pakistan Studies would be in Pakistan (and there is no reported row further to the West in, say, Saudi or Britain), so it shouldn't be too hard to identify centres where these exams were taken on the same day (and the individuals) just a few time zones to the East. Such as Hong Kong. Neither should it be too hard for the British Council to get on top of the concept of time zones, social media, exam data on the Internet etc.If you are going to enjoy all the advantages (euphemism for money) of being an international organisation, then a little extra work would not go amiss. Not to have prepared for this eventuality, particularly in the case of Pakistan Studies for heaven's sake, smacks of more BC incompetence.

British Taxpayers pay for feeder schools for the British Council

I've driven around the Jebel Nafousa and I accept that it wouldn't be easy under normal circumstances for a company to open language schools up there, and it is just a bit too much of a trek from, say, Gharian to Tripoli to take English lessons. What is sickening, however, is that HMG and the FCO start from the position that the only game in town is the British Council, and that this grant of 100,000 Libyan Dinars - about £50,000 these days - is clearly being used to create additional channels for the British Council. For their brand, their courses, their government standing, their business. You might argue that since the British Council has a record of kowtowing to the Gaddafi regime and using taxpayers' money to pay for Gaddafi cronies, this is better. But what nobody seems to have cracked is that the British Council denies, through its teeth, that its own businesses derive benefit from taxpayers' money, when it is plain that the FCO, on behalf of government, are committed to exactly that.

There is no commitment to a free market here, no benefit for the many British companies - publishers and schools - who offer online tuition. The support is expressly and exclusively given to the British Council.

“The LD 20,000 given to each of the schools has been used to  buy equipment and computers” he [the British ambassador] explained, “ The local councils have given the buildings. This allows for the English language schools to charge low fees for their classes.  Using the software and computers, pupils will be able to follow British Council courses, though they will still have to go to Tripoli if they wish to sit a formal exam”.

It sounds like a narrowly conceived and flimsy project that could easily flop. Let's hope that for the sake of the people in Jebel Nafousa it doesn't. Let's also hope that next time a UK ambassador doles out our money, he or she will overcome their institutional myopia and act in the interests of Britain rather than in the unrelated and self-serving interests of the British Council.

New British Council Tax Avoidance Supremo

Yes, consistent with the spirit of the age, and no doubt inspired by Google and Amazon, the British Council has made the new appointment of Head, Global Tax. The new man, Toby Bushill, starts work on June 17th and his tax avoidance credentials, having worked with Deloitte, Coopers and Lybrand and Price Waterhouse are impeccable. The announcement from the office of the British Council's Finance Chief, says:

"Toby will be a key member of the Finance Leadership Team, reporting directly into myself. His wealth of expertise and experience place him well to support the British Councils growth ambition, and in particular, relating to the development and management of our group and subsidiaries structure."

We have remarked many times over the years how nobody seems to mind - government, charity commission, parliamentary select committees, the NAO etc. - that a taxpayer funded organisation should have the freedom to compete, by definition unfairly, with the private sector, and in more recent years have 12 subsidiary companies all over the world. And now the org is making a senior appointment (and not a cheap one I dare say) whose job is to see that the org pays the minimum of tax.That is after all the purpose of all those subsidiary companies.

Can there be any right thinking person who thinks this is OK? Whatever you think of the arrangements made by Google and Amazon and co., they are for profit companies and so will necessarily organise their affairs to pay the minimum. The British Council, however, is (supposedly) not for profit, and would not exist without the millions donated by the taxpayer.

It's an ugly organisation, and it just got uglier.

PS. Tip for Toby: in organisations where you have to report into your superior, it's a good idea to keep your back to the wall.

The heavy price of trusting the British Council

Another British company has had to learn the lesson that the British Council cannot be trusted, and had to realise that the state-sponsored organisation not yet grasped the difference between fair competition and theft. In this case we have a company that sought appropriate assistance, paying UKTI for their role and using the other taxpayer funded services of the British Council, in order to research and then set up an all UK educational exhibition - a first in Azerbaijan. So what did the British Council do next? The story is all here so I won't repeat it. But I feel anger and indignation that the British Council continues to be allowed to operate in this deeply dishonest way just to line its own pockets, even now 11 years after we first drew attention to such behaviour.

These ensuing 11 years have revealed that the British Council is in effect licensed to act dishonestly, to poach the business of genuine enterprise, to leach on others' initiatives, to steal ideas and above all to undermine the efforts of others in order better to help themselves (and they can organise cyphers with titles to have all that officially denied as well). That license is granted by the FCO (who wouldn't know how to spell enterprise, much less understand what it is), the hopeless FAC, the inert NAO and PAC, and the ever indulgent and supine Charity Commission. Plus support groups in the Commons and the Lords, chums at the Beeb and so on. And the so-called trustees of the British Council - "trustee" being yet another concept to have lost its value in 21st century Britain - are all parti pris. The institutions are not to be trusted and there exists no apparent democratic means to address the outrage. Bad stuff.

British Council picked up by Private Eye

The story of the British Council's contempt for court judgements in Nigeria has been picked up by Private Eye. Not available online so you'll have to buy the 22nd March - 4th April edition, but it's on page 28 under the heading "Cultural Studies". As the Eye says: "So much for spreading those British values of justice and fair play around the world, eh?"

Now British Council Nigeria threatened with prison remand and sequestration of premises

Further to our recent piece about the British Council’s non-compliance with a court order in Nigeria, we hear things have moved on, and that their deputy director is now threatened with prison custody. Moreover the writ being brought by the lawyers of the unjustifiably dismissed Awuese Oku, and which names the defendants in that case as The British Council, Dr John Richards and Philip Goodwin, seeks to have the premises of the British Council sealed and sequestered, and their car seized.

Here’s a bit I like: "The Defendants would not have done what they did in their Home Country, United Kingdom". Well, as some of us know to our cost, the British Council has few qualms about engaging in sharp practice here in the UK, but publicly defying the High Court would probably be out of their league. However they do expect to get away with such actions when dealing with Johnny Foreigner. For goodness' sake. These people are paid for by us, and are supposed to act in our interests and in our names. They just don’t.

The court will hear the case on April Fools’ Day.

More trouble at the British Council in Abuja?

We hear rumours of disturbances at the British Council in Abuja, following the court’s judgement on the case brought by Awuese Oku against the British Council for unfair dismissal. The story goes that the judgement means that the BC have to find some money and the authorities were trying to get that money out of them – there was even talk of impounding the British Council’s vehicles. A fair amount of commotion we hear, and the office was closed all day as a result. Surely this can’t mean that the British Council is reluctant to comply with a court order? We hope to have more on this.

British Council's Job to Promote Chinese

The British Council’s “Chief Executive”, like his predecessor, sends out regular puffletters to British Council employees, who probably just yawn; the letters are boring and monotonous. But I am going to quote from the most recent one, just so any British readers who may be taxpayers understand the mindset of the management of this absurd organisation. If you read the press as it normally refers to the organisation, it tends to say the BC “which promotes Britain abroad” or “promoting British culture and the English language” or similar. In fact the instinct of the organisation is to stick its oar into everything. So, try this from the latest puffletter:

To start we will be celebrating Chinese New Year next week with the distribution of educational packs and lesson plans on Chinese language and culture to over 10,000 schools in the UK. We will also be running the 10^th British Council/HSBC Mandarin speaking competition.

And as anybody who knows me will confirm, I am not even remotely anti-Chinese, anti  foreign culture, anti foreign languages etc., so let’s not depart from the issue here. Is it the British Council’s job to decide what should be taught in our schools, or is there perhaps a government department that exists for that purpose? Is promoting Chinese the British Council’s business at all? Is there anything about this in the British Council’s charter? If so, let’s see it. We have learned to expect nothing of use from the “trustees” of the British Council, but perhaps one of those parliamentary committees which from time to time lob soft and obsequious questions in the direction of British Council management could ask them what they are doing.  

High time the Home Office was sectioned

What next? Intelligence tests for tourists? The British economy is, by common consent, going down the tubes, and the massively successful international education industry instead of getting government encouragement or even, gulp, support is being strangled. But it doesn’t stop there – we are also making it hard for anyone to come in who might help the economy by, say, walking round the Tower of London, Stonehenge, or Edinburgh Castle and spending their money here as tourists, and so developing a taste for and interest in the country and our goods and services. Whereas a Chinese tourist can get easy access to the Schengen group of European countries, if he or she wants to come to the UK

“At present, Chinese tourists are forced to have their fingerprints taken at a centre in China, face higher fees and have to complete a lengthier application form than if they want to visit most other countries in Europe.”

So not exactly a warm welcome.

But here’s the killer. When this cost to the British economy was put to the Home Office, The Telegraph reports, their spokesman said “We are open to the brightest and best”. I mean, would you Adam and Eve it? One fatheaded government minister (or lackey) after another trots out this formula as if it was some sort of saving grace and made sense. It would make as much sense, no, rather more in fact, if guards were posted at the door of the House of Commons canteen and applied the same criteria to any MP who wanted to enter. Not many would get their lunch.

Neil McIntosh fires Parthian Shot at British Council

Education Investor has published in full the letter written by Neil McIntosh, retiring Chief Executive of CfBT, to the British Council chair.

The covering article says: In a letter to Sir Vernon Ellis, the British Council’s chair, dated 23 November, Neil McIntosh accused the charity of chasing "a contradictory set of... goals" and of "competing with those it is funded to represent". 

Neil says important things that need to be said. You must read it.

Austerity? Nah, whoopee for socially-engaged emerging cultural leaders

Never mind the cuts, the caps, unemployment, the sheer struggle.  Fortunately the British Council does not have to worry about such things.  Assured of government grants, civil service pensions, guaranteed contracts, government backing, charitable and diplomatic status (while operating multiple for profit companies worldwide), the British Council can use our money for whimsy. Here we read of its support for socially engaged emerging cultural leaders. It’s not even a fig leaf to cover our ingratiation with the oil producers, neither is it masquerading as aid. Not even the arts. What is it? Damned if I know. I am however entirely sure that 99.9% of British taxpayers would regard it as an absurd piece of self-indulgence. We really should not be paying tax to sustain this dreadful organisation. Enough.

British Council toiletries - what a cheek

The last thing the British Council wants to do is wash its dirty linen in public. In fact I know from direct experience that the British Council would do almost anything rather than face the truth when it doesn’t look good for them, and so they dissemble a lot of the time. But what of this story? The head of Internal Services at the British Council (India) was laid off last January, after the British Council discovered that 62.5 lakh – about £85,000 – had been syphoned out of their accounts, presumably because they had identified this particular employee as syphoner-in-chief. But this story has only just become news now almost one year later. Hello?

Here’s what The Times of India had to say about it. Note that they say that the matter came to light two months ago – October one presumes – when auditors discovered that there was no such firm as JMJ Enterprises, which was the name under which the succession of invoices for toiletries etc. were issued to a value of £85,000. This raises more murky issues.

1. If the British Council discovered that it was being taken for £85,000 by one of its own employees in January, why has it taken so long for the police to be involved? Do we assume that the British Council would rather hush the story up than involve the wheels of justice?
2. If The Times of India is right that this “came to light” two months ago, then it was by definition in the dark before that. So who then were these auditors who uncovered the scam a second time? Presumably not the British Council’s own tame auditors, the monkeys who speak no evil, hear no evil and see no evil.
3. If the British Council had been a little luckier and succeeded in hushing up the scam, how were they planning to account for a truly outrageous toiletries bill, and how indeed do they normally cover things up when £85,000 is spent on, er, fresh air?
4. The culprit in this instance presumably believed that, apart from losing his job at the BC, he faced no further sanction. Did he perhaps know too much, or threaten to spill the beans on other matters? Are perhaps bigger sums involved elsewhere? Could it be that the Council decided that exposing themselves to ridicule over their toiletries was a lesser evil than some other revelations that are yet to see the light of day?

One senses that there is more to come on this one.

British Council toiletries racket

You think I'm joking? Well, read this. The point is that it is reported in India that the former acting head of internal services at the British Council in India, one Marcello Philbert, forged documents that persuaded the British Council to pay 62.5 lakh for stationery, toiletries and cleaning materials that they had (we presume) not in fact bought.  If, like me, you are a bit vague about what a Lakh is, then you might not dwell on such a news item. In fact the sum extracted is the equivalent of £85,000.

£85,000. So some clueless dullard in the British Council in India was either routinely passing invoices for hundreds or thousands of pounds over an extended period for "toiletries" that they never used, or else the suspicion must be that he/she too was involved in the scam and draining the organisation’s money. AKA our money. How is it possible to be so stupid? The suspicion has to be that however stupid someone in the British Council is, they can rely on the fact that the next manager up is more stupid (or more corrupt) again. In this case, the most intelligent person seems to have been Mr Philbert who after working for this hopeless, incompetent and corrupt organisation, realised that he could get £85,000 out of the British Council by issuing invoices for fictitious lorry loads of Andrex and Mr Muscle because nobody did an audit, nobody checked, and of course nobody gave a monkey’s because it wasn’t their money.And what sort of an organisation has a budget for toiletries where such a load of money can apparently be lost? Answers on a postcard.

For pity’s sake.

NICE to see you, to see you...

It’s over a year since the British Council expressed concern that they might find it difficult to sublet unused space in Spring Gardens. The British Council have no doubt been relieved that they are not subject to normal commercial pressures and so were able to take their time finding a tenant for their premium office space in Spring Gardens, because only now, more than a year later, is a tenant moving in. Fortunately it’s another quango so they won’t be looking at each other critically, just enjoying being somewhere comfortable at the expense of the taxpayer. The quango is the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). That is the organisation that advises everybody to walk more, eat fresh fruit, and not to smoke etc. The taxpayer should be jolly pleased that these super-expensive premises are being used by such deserving organisations. As Brucie would say, “Didn’t they do well?”.

Bojo Gets It

Yes, Bojo gets it. It’s a pity the Home Office and UKBA do not. And of course Bojo can only speak for London (officially anyway).  If the government was courageous enough to recognise that an international student is not the same thing as an immigrant and bring an end to the nonsense whereby they are cutting the throats of our educational institutions in order to please their right wing and attract the xenophobic vote,  that would be an important step in the right direction. And also if the government could stop trotting out this “brightest and best” formula, that would surely help too. Of course the better research universities want the brightest and best, but a) they don’t always get them (plenty of evidence for that) and b) that has nothing to do with the crucial argument relating to the economy. What the schools and universities here need above all is enrolments from students who are willing and able to pay for the superior services on offer. It is US who must be the brightest and the best, and it is sad that we get such a duff lead from the short planks in Westminster.

[Thanks to WhitSt]

Another ICEF Cracker

I have been fortunate enough to attend the ICEF Workshops in Berlin as blogged here in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and now 2012, and have witnessed its continuing remarkable success. The most obvious reason for that continued success is that things are done so well. It matters not who you talk to about the event, everybody is in agreement – the venue, the systems, the staff, the use of space, the catering, the hospitality, the supporting events – everything is first class plus. But it is more than that. This is not just a well organised event for professionals in international education, but an event organised by professionals with a particular expertise in international education. Supporting this, and the many events and activities of ICEF, will be found an enormous amount of research, contact development, quality assessment, project development, new media, seminars, education and training programmes, and more. The work that goes into all of this ensures that the professional substance of the event – most particularly for the educational institutions as manifest in the quality of the agents they meet there – is the best there is. This is quality in depth. By managing continued growth and by its dedication to making the best even better (even against an ever more difficult economic and political backdrop) ICEF is an example to all. As you see from the picture above, this year the Berlin Workshop was sold out. So if you propose to be there next year, my advice would be to book early.

Standard British Council Evasion

The article we highlighted in the Guardian recently has now been followed up by a British Council manager named in the piece, one Jo Beall. I should simply like to reproduce here one of the comments made at the foot of the article by "Late Developer" (not me!) which goes to the heart of the matter.

Beal fails to address the central issue. The conflict of interests at the heart of its operations How can the BC represent the interests of UK providers while competing for the same contracts. When does the BC decide to compete with providers, and when to collaborate? It has an incentive to keep information and commercially useful information to itself, to secure competitive advantage. It keeps other UK providers in the dark to ensure its interests are protected.As such its representative role should be taken away from it. And in the meantime and with immediate effect it should make transparent the criteria that inform its decisions as to when it competes with and when it collaborates with other UK providers.

And more than a gripe

When the British Council lunged in favour of Hotcourses in 2001 I knew it wasn't because Jeremy Hunt was doing anything well, because he wasn't. And today, eleven years later, while Hotcourses still has the monopoly on sales of the British Council's "Education UK" portfolio, we can all see that the British Council and Hotcourses have resolutely held hands through a prolonged period of abject failure. For example, what percentage of the boarding school market have this dynamic duo succeeded in persuading to sign up for their services? Less than one percent. But they both pretend that they offer a public service - the British Council's "Chief Executive" Martin Davidson repeated the claim only yesterday. 

Read John Ward's account today - it really is a revelation.

My "Gripe"

The Guardian today publishes an article headed “The British Council: friend or foe?” which touches very gently on how the organisation competes with the private sector. The writer’s depressing conclusion is that whatever the “gripes” of the education businesses the British Council is here to stay.  I say he and / or The Guardian doesn’t get it. If you pay taxes to subsidise an organisation that can use your money to put you out of business, how is that a “gripe”? It’s not a gripe, it’s a gross abuse of privilege.

The “chief executive” of the BC describes this parasitic arrangement as “entrepreneurial public service” while the director of education, while showing the usual British Council combination of arrogance and ignorance in seemingly taking credit for the very existence of the education market place, says that objecting to the BC’s activities is “tantamount to a private university saying that all public universities should vacate the market”. The analogy is absurd, but it is just the sort of fatheaded remark you get from an organisation comfortable in its monopolies, its distortions and its multiple privileges. And the squidgy Guardian lets them get away with it. Sad.