I don’t envy the British Council management, what with having to cope with a 26% percent cut (in real terms) in government funding and no government guidance on what they are supposed to be for. However, given their influence on the whole industry I think it is well worth us keeping a close eye on their increasing commercialism. Here are some guesses on what the information in their 2011-2015 corporate plan will mean to the TEFL side of the British Council:

– They will increasingly drift towards being a despatch company that employs teachers on hourly contracts to teach on other people’s premises, sometimes without even having their own school in the city. That will include countries where they mainly just arrange for assistant language teachers in local schools, as I think I read somewhere is true in France

– There will also be an expansion of the Indian model, meaning only or mainly local teachers employed in British Council centres, to other countries

– Some premises and even countries will close

– In other places they will be mainly or entirely based on the premises of other organisations

– An attempt to swing back to the teaching centres really pushing UK-based exams, presumably including when it is not necessarily financially the thing they would choose to do

– Six new teaching centres in Asia (though I’d guess these will be the “partner premises” that I mentioned earlier)

– Some expansion of English teaching in “wider Europe” (Balkans, Central Asia and some more distant parts of Eastern Europe)

Actually lots of that, especially the last two, didn’t involve any reading between the lines, but it was such a good post title that I kept it anyway… The corporate plan is in fact surprisingly frank and easy to read,  with far less biz-speak than you might expect