I’ve been worried for a while that by doing more and more things that commercial organisations do more and more in the way that commercial organisations do them (as well as competing with – often British-owned – commercial organisations), the British Council is slowly falling into the trap set for it and losing its reason to exist as a publically-owned organisation, or even existing at all. All of that is especially true of the English teaching bits of it.
Amongst some amusingly senile waffle that is perhaps to be expected of our second chamber, that also seems to be the main worry expressed in the recent House of Lords debate on British Council Funding, e.g.
“the maintenance of the British Council’s charitable status is key to its financial well-being. Could the Minister assure us, too, that the increase in revenue-earning activities and partnerships with private companies does not in any way jeopardise the continuation of that charitable status?”
“Yes, a mixed-economy model is a very good thing for the British Council, but it must never become a privatised model. If there is a privatised model, the British Council will not be, as my noble friend Lord Judd said, where it needs to be. It will not be offering opportunities to the people who need them.”
and it is certainly cannot be true, as The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord of Guildford, poor guy) says that “all of its activities contribute to its charitable purpose” when many of the things it does nowadays are also being done by private companies with no charitable purposes.
From Hansard here:
TEFLtastic 