My nephew, a politics undergraduate at Leeds University, rang me the other day to get advice on whether to do a year abroad. He wants to go to a north European university. “Do it,” was my answer, “it will change your life.”
As a 21-year-old my husband, Misha Glenny, won a British Council scholarship to study in Prague. This was during the Cold War which gave him a precious insight into how the communist system functioned. Without this experience, it’s unlikely that he would have gone on to be the BBC’s central Europe editor during the fall of communism or to have written several award-winning books both on the region and the growth of global organised crime.
The British Council has been running student exchanges since the Second World War. While we were members of the European Union, it administered the Erasmus scheme. After Brexit, this was replaced by the Turing scheme, which was devised, set up and administered by the British Council. In its first year Turing helped 41,000 students study abroad, 48 per cent of them from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Yet this week we hear that the government has stripped the British Council of its role running the £110 million scheme. Instead, the outsourcing firm Capita has won the contract in a government tender. The reason? Because Capita offered to run it for less money.
What about quality and expertise? Where is Capita’s track record on student exchanges? Where is its legitimacy in the world of higher education? It cannot claim to have international tentacles stretching across the world and going back almost 100 years, as the British Council has.
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Losing the Turing contract is yet another financial blow for the council, which has been left reeling by the pandemic. It is facing devastating staff cuts and office closures. Few people realise that until Covid-19 hit, it ran a highly successful commercial operation delivering English lessons and exams around the world with a turnover of £1.2 billion. Its biggest markets were China and India but when lockdown came income streams dried up overnight.
The commercial arm of the council will take time to recover. The government has given it a loan to see it through the hard times. Pulling the rug from under its feet with the Turing decision makes no financial sense and inflicts another wound on one of the key instruments of UK soft power around the world.
If this government is serious about Global Britain it should be backing quality. Going for a cut-price Capita deal is a false economy.
Kirsty Lang was a trustee of the British Council from 2014 to 2020
