The Language Business

The Triennial Review: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

 I have read the executive summary and there may be more when I have read the full report. So here’s an initial response, and let’s start with the good.

-          The report says there is “scope for more consistent delivery of high quality product across the board”.  

-          The report acknowledges that there are conflicts of interest in the org in acting as gatekeeper and advisor on projects which it may seize for itself and thus deny proper open competition.

-          It says the Council needs a business model whereby it acts “transparently and accountably in line with its purpose as set out in the Royal Charter”.

-          It recommends that the FCO “strengthen capability and and mechanisms to to exercise oversight of British Council activity”.

These are all points made on this blog for almost ten years so we are glad that something is at last to be done, or at least that a need is perceived. However the report fails to see the issue of competition,with genuine tax-paying British enterprise, from a government sponsored organisation, as the fundamental outrage that it is. Businesses work through enterprise, and prosper or die depending on their ability to manage market forces, their cash-flow, calculate risks and actions etc., and they pay taxes for the privilege of being UK based. The British Council receives money paid in tax by such enterprises, uses taxpayer-funded resources in terms of overseas representations to advance its commercial interests, enjoys subsidy, government support, multiple government contracts, tax advantages at home and overseas and civil service pension arrangements,  and it also owns multiple overseas companies (USA, Mexico, Hong Kong, India etc.) to ensure that as little tax as possible is paid here. Since as a public body it can’t go under and all pensions will be paid etc. there is unlimited scope for moral hazard. It competes unfairly thanks to government indulgence.That is nothing short of outrageous.

One notion mooted in the review is the establishment of a “commercial, legal entity for income generating activity …with its own Board of Directors reporting to the main British Council Board”. No, no, no, no.  The writers of this report appear not to understand the low standing of those who run this organisation. There are many others who could produce evidence of their lack of integrity, but let me give a few examples here:

-          It was the British Council Board who (to my cost) told my entire client base that it had contracted a consortium of Hotcourses, UCAS, CSU and Yahoo. That was untrue. It had in fact contracted a £100 company “Education Websites Ltd”. In the contract it states specifically that UCAS and CSU were to play no role of any kind. There is no mention anywhere, in the contract or the shareholding, of Yahoo. It was a malicious misrepresentation designed to promote the commercial interests of the British Council at the expense of legitimate British business.

-          It was the British Council who advised me, IN ANSWER TO A FoI ENQUIRY in 2005, and so on behalf of its board, that there had been no changes to the (Education Websites) contract it had signed in 2001. In fact it had just signed a new contract with a different company (Sheffield Data Ltd).

-          At the time when the British Council advised me that there had been no changes to their contract with Education Websites Ltd, a crude attempt was being made to bury that company and put it out of sight. A company called Remone Ltd was incorporated in early 2005 which then swapped names with Education Websites Ltd, so that anyone who did investigate that company would get taken off the scent. Most traces of this appear to have been removed now from Companies House, although the facts can still be proved.

-          At a time when the British Council Chief David Green, and the Chair of Trustees Lord Kinnock told parliamentary committees that grant-in-aid money and its commercial activities were completely separate and even that it was “impossible” for grant money to subsidise its commercial activities, grant money was being used to pay the fees of Gaddafi’s cronies at the Council’s own school in Tripoli. That was revealed through an FoI enquiry.

-          When the British Council trustees undertook a “thorough and independent investigation” of my complaints they appointed an insider who was actually given paid employment by them while at the same time supposedly investigating complaints against them. This “investigator” interviewed me twice, but interviewed nobody, not one soul - much less the management responsible - from the British Council, and did not mention my specific complaints, much less address them in his “report”. And finally he  recommended that I should be paid £10,000 in “expenses”. There was a clear case for the trustees rejecting this non-report, and at the very least enquiring why they should pay £10,000 in expenses when no expenses had been claimed. But no, they wanted me to take the money and shut up. Bad move, guys. And shame on you. It was not only not thorough and not independent, it was a bloody disgrace.

There’s plenty more where that came from. The FCO must this time do the job properly, and work with people of quality.

The Triennial Review - The FCO asserts

Remember this?: “We’ve received an initial draft from the Foreign Office, it’s a very, very long document and our Board hasn’t even had a chance to discuss it yet. I don’t think I can promise that there is going to be a great announcement about it in the immediate future, largely because this first draft needs a lot of work doing to it before we can even discuss it properly. We’re having a lot of conversations with the FCO and there is still a lot of water to flow under the bridge.” 

It may have been Davidson’s predecessor that started the absurd monthly propaganda circulars that are inflicted on all employees of the British Council. Mr Davidson, now “Sir Martin”, was happy to continue in the same vein of puffery (thankfully sparing readers news of any recent taxpayer-funded painting holidays or publishing samples of his oeuvres from Santiago de Compostela and other sorties) but in recent times the preferred model has been the sycophantic interview. In March (see above) he indicated that he was busy negotiating the content of the Triennial Review with the FCO. It was, after all, “very, very long” and needed “a lot of work doing to it”.

But, hello, look at the change of tune when the latest interviewer tries to extract an update.

Q. Can you say a bit more about what’s happening with the Triennial Review, which may have quite an impact on us in the future? Has there been progress?

 A. It’s important to remember that this is not our report and it’s up to the FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) to publish the report, not us. I’m hoping they will do so soon.

 Q. Have we got an agreed draft then? Previous updates to staff internally have said that the report is still in draft form and that we are in conversation with the FCO to iron out some inconsistencies.

 A. It’s not for us to agree the draft and I am quite certain that there will be are [sic] aspects of the final report that we don’t agree with at all. But at the moment the report has not been finalised and as soon as it is we will let people know.

It looks as though an element of humility, or possibly discipline, has at last crept in to the demeanour of the British Council board. “This is not our report” and “It’s not for us to agree the draft” strike a new note. So in fact he wasn't having a lot of conversations with the FCO, or negotiating, or busy ironing out the FCO's inconsistencies. Perhaps the ungrateful FCO turned down his offer of help. Or perhaps the new trustee from the FCO just told him to pipe down.

But arrogance and bluster are never far away. Elsewhere in the interview the CEO reverts to type with such as this:

We also need to demonstrate that we operate in a fair and open way and that we are open to influence from people. We don’t pretend that we get everything right all the time and when we get things wrong we fix it.

If only.

Publishers Association Submission to Triennial Review

I would urge readers to go to the original but in summary the areas of discomfort identified by the PA include two points not unknown on this blog over the past nine years:

• Concern at the role of the British Council as gatekeeper, as the “go to” organisation for governments and public bodies, meaning that they get first dibs on whatever is going. The PA identifies issues in Colombia, Italy and Greece (and there are plenty more on this blog).
• Distress at the role of the British Council as competitor, and questions over whether its activities are “charitable” and consistent with its Royal Charter, and controls over the use “grant-in-Aid” money, specifically in supporting competition with British enterprise.

The submission closes with a generous way forward, asking for greater transparency in the organisation’s commercial logic and its accounting, and better external control (please note, FCO, that the combination of select committees with different agendas and supine “trustees” does not work). We would put it differently from the PA in that in our view  the organisation is discredited, untrustworthy and out of order, and we would like to see more radical action.  But there is a clear consensus around the view that the British Council is presently out of line and enjoying unacceptable privileges to the detriment of genuine British business, and this cannot be allowed to continue.

And to the FCO we would say this: please do not allow the British Council to obstruct, obfuscate and prevaricate any longer, and give all of us – not just those of us who work in international education but schools and publishers and training organisations and exhibition organisers and consultants at home and abroad and the fatigued taxpayer - the report and the outcome that Britain deserves.

Levant Education hits the nail on the head

 

This is a truly excellent article by David Mitchell, director of Levant Education. Please read.

Vlad is rampant: send in the Morris Dancers

The Lords have issued their report on soft power and said what a jolly good thing soft power is, and what a lucky bunch we are to have the BBC and the British Council. In an excellent piece in today’s Scotsman, Tiffany Jenkins points up futility of using what the British Council refers to as “cultural relations” as a substitute for foreign policy backed up by robust values.

The context could hardly be more telling. This is the UK-Russia Year of Culture, the Russians are in Crimea, the British Council is trying to drown the concerns of their employers about accountability and fair trade, and anyway currently focused on how to pay themselves more, and the Lords are cheering them on.  It is indicative and a symptom of the West having lost its way morally, militarily, diplomatically and culturally.

The good thing about the Lords report is that it reminds the Home Office that including students in their hallowed (and hollow) immigration statistics, and supposedly bringing down “immigration” by squeezing student numbers, is counterproductive, misleading and bad for Britain’s educational institutions. But any bloody fool can see that. The Lords also trot out the standard British Council lines  about building trust, when – as we here and countless others have pointed out – it is patently obvious that you can’t build trust without being trustworthy, and in that regard the British Council falls at the first fence.

As Tiffany Jenkins says “The elephant in the room is that soft power has failed”. The Lords report is a typical irrelevance of a strutting government describing itself as a “modern-day cultural superpower” while it dismantles its armed forces, weary from being sent to fight wars which had nothing to do with Britain's defence, and puts its faith in the self-serving antics of the British Council. The loss of a sense of direction is palpable.The report, written by the overprivileged superannuated, is an exercise in navel diplomacy:  of the effete, by the effete and for the effete.

Read Tiffany’s article here.

British Council Plans to Change Salary Structure

British Council staff have been sent a circular from management about restructuring their salaries in order to align their packages more closely with the private sector. It sounds like a good wheeze.

“…the key features of the new package will be a market-linked salary and bonus opportunity together with a defined contribution pension scheme…. Our overall costs would most likely increase but we feel that investing in our offer to staff is vital if the organisation is to achieve its long term ambitions.”

 “we are at a very early stage of this work and have not yet started to discuss our proposal with Government. We want to first consult with colleagues internally and with TUS before we approach Treasury. We cannot be sure whether the response from Treasury will be favourable but we feel we have a strong case to make.”

While as we know the British Council are having “a lot of conversations” with their FCO bosses about the Triennial Review, they have - it says here - not raised the subject of their new salary structure. They have , they say, a strong case to make, but they are not making it just yet presumably because they have been distracted by a “very, very long” document which calls into question their accountability, their transparency and their ability to trade fairly. As soon as that little hiccough is out of the way they can get on with the business of paying themselves more and restructuring their privileges even more favourably. Yes, it will cost more, but who cares when the taxpayer is footing the bill?

So where does that leave “The Triennial Review”? If we thought it was significant (and I confess I had rather hoped it was) then we were evidently wrong.  It evidently has little bearing on the British Council’s plans to pay itself better and use its subsidy and privileges to make life harder for genuine enterprise. As I have said before, by genuine enterprise I mean the kind that uses its own money, that carries its own overhead, that operates without gifted contracts and privileges of every kind, that makes it own pension arrangements and which has only its own resources to fall back on when the going gets tough. It does not refer to the featherbedded, subsidised, privileged parasites who play at commerce knowing that however incompetent they may be (oh yes they are) they will always be comfortably bailed out. And now will probably get a bonus on top.

Their FCO bosses and the Treasury should a) make it clear that the BC has no business to be floating this plan with their staff while the Triennial Review is pending and while fundamental issues of transparency, accountability and fair trade are being addressed, and b) tell them where to stick it.

What happened to the Triennial Review?

Do you remember the Triennial Review? On this blog I urged interested parties to contribute to the debate and I have no doubt plenty did. It was announced in September (and you can still see it here) that “The Review Team will report to the Government on their findings before the end of the year.”

They meant last year of course, and it hasn’t happened. Why? Well, the British Council head man, Sir Martin “hey, call me Marty” Davidson, has offered the following explanation to his understandably concerned British Council colleagues.

“We’ve received an initial draft from the Foreign Office, it’s a very, very long document and our Board hasn’t even had a chance to discuss it yet. I don’t think I can promise that there is going to be a great announcement about it in the immediate future, largely because this first draft needs a lot of work doing to it before we can even discuss it properly. We’re having a lot of conversations with the FCO and there is still a lot of water to flow under the bridge. I know it’s frustrating for people but I have to ask colleagues to be patient and recognise that just because a draft has been completed it doesn’t mean it’s right for wider circulation, not just within the British Council but anywhere else either.”

There are of course some dopes in the organisation, including presumably the supine “trustees”, who will find such an explanation credible, but for most it is the standard insult to intelligence. The organisation is delaying distribution of the report because it doesn’t like it. He says “it is very, very long”. I bet it uses lots of long words too. He says the board “hasn’t even had a chance to discuss it yet”. Pull the other one, Marty boy. You also say “we’re having a lot of conversations with the FCO, and there is still a lot of water to flow under the bridge”. So, it’s very long (well, actually very, very long), and despite the fact that they haven’t discussed it yet, they are having lots of conversations with the FCO. And the board are playing pooh-sticks in order to pass the time (and get the review changed).

So, what is the problem exactly? Marty says there are “challenges”.

“Those challenges are around transparency, fair trade, accountability and alignment with government policy, which are all issues that we know and recognise and have been part of our conversations internally for a number of years. There are no surprises and we just need to carry on thinking through how we respond to those challenges as an organisation.”

After the board has met to discuss the review presumably. There’s a sort of poetry here which dear Marty doesn’t get. If you stand accused of lack of transparency, unfair trade and lack of accountability, and these accusations – voiced pretty much universally elsewhere which is why there are “no surprises” - are articulated in an authoritative report, the natural response is to obfuscate, prevaricate and procrastinate. QED, Marty lad, QED.

App Matters

Please, dear reader, would you consider reviewing our App? Two kind people have (unprompted) given us some encouragement and 5 stars, and these are helpful, but a few more would be very welcome. Just click on the screenshot above and then where the arrow points and off you go.

I'm new to app publishing (APP-rentice?), so at the risk of boring the experienced app-people let me report on a few things that I have noticed.

1. Everything takes longer. You make a change on a website and the change is instant. Make a change to an app (which I have to ask my developers to do anyway) and Google Play is pretty quick, a couple of hours maybe, but the Appstore takes a week. Yes, a week, even for the most minor change. We published version 1.05 on Google a week ago, but as I write it's not in the Appstore yet.

2. The app is attributed publicly to the developer rather than the publisher. Thus ours says Pipe and Piper rather than International Education Connect because they are the ones with the app store accounts. So a slight miff factor, and a bit odd, but not a problem.

3. The download numbers given are a nonsense. OK you can't get them from Apple, but it took a couple of weeks for Google to reach 10 when the developers and I between us had probably downloaded the app more times than that in the first week as we were doing upgrades to 1.01, 1.02 etc.

On the plus side you can go back to an app after a few days and open the same page of data you left when you last used it, and of course it's fast. These days the website is so fast it hardly matters, but I mention it anyway.

Your support is much appreciated.

 

Keeping Busy

Months of work and we now have a new English in Britain website and an app for iOS and Android mobile devices. 

The new website is more than a facelift. We have had a programme re-write and added new functionality so that students and agents can register and keep records of "favourite" schools and courses.

The app has a related but nevertheless slightly different design and functionality. Both items are very fast, but the app is superfast. And while I half expected the launch to push our Guide into the background, in fact downloads have accelerated quite sharply.

What's the point of three products? Three routes to school data are better than one, and there are different strokes for different folks. All three - the responsive design website, the iOS and Android app, and the Guide (a PDF offering the user 1000 hyperlinks to data direct from their desktops) - break new ground in the promotion of British ELT.

 

 

 

 

 

Sense on "soft power" from overseas ambassadors

It's not a rant, it's cool, logical, well argued and supported by the evidence, and I would encourage you to click on the image and go to the original.

In my own evidence to the Lords Committee on "Soft Power" I wrote (inter alia) "Just as we as individuals need to focus on what we are rather than worry about our reputations, so countries seeking influence over others need to focus above all on what they do, and not concern themselves with the message". The British Council sees itself as an instrument of soft power, and as a direct consequence of its perception of its role and its construct as an arm of the FCO, works precisely against the interests of Britain, its integrity and the interests of its enterprises - and of those overseas. I won't reproduce David Mitchell's excellent article here, and would invite readers to take in the evidence given by the German, Norwegian, Japanese and Brazilian ambassadors. You do not want a "soft power" policy, much less a bunch of quasi-governmental parasites posing as instruments of soft power. Read the good sense of these men who are not lumbered with trying to justify an anachronistic propaganda-driven handicap such as the British Council.