british council – Levant Education Group

British Council apologises for commercial abuse of FCO position

November 2, 2016October 2, 2017levanteducation

The British Council has issued an apology for a ‘lapse’ that saw it take advantage of Levant Education’s business and collaboration with the FCO in Azerbaijan to launch its own competing offer in the same market.

What happens when a UK private enterprise seeks (and pays for) support from the British government in new markets? If that company is in the business of international education, it is likely to find that it has flashed up on the radar of an aggressive, state-funded competitor.

In 2012 UK education company Levant Education commissioned support from UKTI, the FCO and the British Council to launch UK-focussed education fairs in Azerbaijan, after successfully launching similar events in Turkey. That support cost Levant Education thousands of pounds for UKTI/FCO facilities (the event reception was hosted at the UK Embassy, where the Ambassador spoke to a specially invited audience) and would go on to cost a lot more.

UK in Azerbaijan Ambassador Irfan Siddiq

At the reception, and subsequently at the exhibition itself the next day, British Council staff quietly approached the university representatives who had joined the ground-breaking event. As BC ‘Head of HE and Education Services’ Gordon Slaven’s apology admits, they “used the opportunity to enquire into participants interest in a possible British Council exhibition.”

During the ‘independent’ investigation conducted by Verita (paid for by the British Council…) in London, British Council staff admitted that they had been under pressure to identify ways to increase revenue and make more money in 2012, as the government grant was being cut. That drive to be more commercially aggressive is what undoubtedly pushed BC staff to abuse its FCO status in Azerbaijan to gain unfair competitive advantage, going into direct competition with a private enterprise that had both paid the FCO for its assistance, and secured a promise of non-competition from the British Council Regional Director, Helen Silvestre.

British Council SIEM (Services for International Education Marketing) products – exhibitions, market reports, online marketing – were launched in Azerbaijan in 2013, following Levant Education’s first successful exhibition. The British Council is seen as a government office, an FCO agency, and a charity – useful branding and cover for its lucrative commercial operations that generate £1 billion every year, tax-free, from IELTS testing, English teaching, Education Marketing and education related contracts.

The Verita investigation uncovered incredible duplicity from British Council staff in Baku and Istanbul. While working with Levant Education on its new project, in apparent harmony and good humour, they were simultaneously working to duplicate the event and sell the idea to UK universities and education providers.

Levant Education Managing Director and owner David Mitchell writes:

The British Council’s recently introduced ‘Independent Complaints Process’ has failed its first test since a critical Foreign & Commonwealth Office Triennial Review highlighted competition and accountability issues in 2014.

The Council has half-heartedly apologised for its blatant hijacking of our business in Azerbaijan. However the Verita investigation report was carried out as a paid-for service for the British Council, covering up more than it revealed. The final report skates over unfair competition issues, provides for no accountability for Management decisions taken in Istanbul and Baku, and goes to great lengths to ‘blame the victim’ – bizarrely finding that Levant Education was in some way to blame because it later dared to publicly complain about the BC’s dishonest behaviour.

The report also fails to address the financial impact on Levant Education: between money invested in the project, fees to UKTI/the FCO, and lost earnings due the unfair state competition, Levant has lost a six figure sum after making the mistake of trusting the FCO, UKTI and British Council.

Levant Education will be seeking a review from the parliamentary ombudsman, and seeking legal advice also. A genuine investigation needs to be conducted by an independent body, rather than a paid-for public relations service on behalf of the government agency. The British Council should not be allowed to compete for competitive commercial services while disguised as a government agency/FCO department/charitable concern. The BC’s actions in Azerbaijan, and in Turkey (where it also ignored promises made in regards to fair competition) were dishonest, anti-competitive and devious. The apology is a start, but once again the British Council has been shown to be more concerned about commercial gain and face-saving PR than about accountability, transparency or fair competition.

The British Council: Transparency

May 6, 2016November 2, 2016levanteducation

It’s nearly 2 years since a Foreign & Commonwealth report, following a root and branch Triennial Review concluded that their were serious concerns around commercial accountability, financial transparency, conflicts of interest and fair competition with the private sector.

Since the review the British Council has made efforts to improve transparency, stating on its website that it is ‘fully committed to transparency in our decision-making processes, how we work and the programmes and services we provide. Transparency is an important aspect of the British Council’s accountability to the UK public, Parliament and the people who participate in our programmes and projects‘.

Part of that transparency is to publish the minutes of its Board of Trustees meetings. At the time of writing, they hadn’t got round to this yet in 2016, so we should look back to 2015 to see how the Council’s commitment to transparency is going. Here are some highlights:

Chair’s Business

Information in this section has been redacted/removed as it is likely to be exempt from disclosure on the grounds that it is “likely to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs” as defined in Section 36 (Prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000*.

Triennial Review

Status Resolution: Macau

The Board approved a resolution to authorise the British Council’s branch in Hong Kong to register with the Macau Tax Department. The resolution was proposed by Usha Prashar and seconded by Gareth Bullock.

Examinations: Secure English Language Testing (SELT)

Mark informed the Board that the IELTS consortium of Cambridge Assessment, IDP and British Council has been named by UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) as a preferred bidder for one of two SELT concessions for testing within the UK, and for one of either one or two concessions for testing in the rest of the world. He also corrected the figures in the paper which should read that the potential additional income is R£DACTED

COO Report

Information in this section has been redacted/removed as it is likely to be exempt from disclosure on the grounds that it is “likely to prejudice the commercial interests” of either the British Council or another party, as it is defined in Section 43 (Commercial interests) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000*.

Report from the Audit CommitteeThe risk reserve had been cut by £4million as the Committee had agreed that risks from tax exposure had been reduced the Global Finance Change Programme was on track:Information in this section has been redacted/removed as it is likely to be exempt from disclosure on the grounds that it is “likely to prejudice the commercial interests” of either the British Council or another party, as it is defined in Section 43 (Commercial interests) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000*.

New entities for our operation in Russia

Any other business Information in this section has been redacted/removed as it is likely to be exempt from disclosure on the grounds that it is “likely to prejudice the commercial interests” of either the British Council or another party, as it is defined in Section 43 (Commercial interests) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000*.

So, about as transparent as ~~REDACTED~~ then.

The British Council: Conflicts of interest

May 6, 2016November 2, 2016levanteducation

The British Council and ‘clarity of purpose’

In the 2014 Triennial Review report about the British Council, another area of concern for the FCO is ‘clarity of purpose’, or conflict of interest in plain English.

In its Corporate Plan, the British Council claims to create value for the UK by:

Creating introductions, connections and business opportunities for UK organisations, social enterprises and businesses, helping them to learn from overseas engagement.

UK companies in international education (a sector estimated to be worth $6.3 trillion globally) can turn to ‘UKTI Education’ for assistance. FCO Minister of State, Hugo Swire, points out that the FCO and British Council support UKTI in promoting UK education exports.

Mr Swire writes, in a letter to Levant Education, that “UKTI and the British Council now share opportunities worth more than £100k with the wider international education sector.”

£100k is about half of what cooperation with UKTI and the British Council has cost Levant Education, one Small Enterprise, since agreeing to work together in 2012. It is also a tiny fraction of the Council’s £1 billion annual income.

The British Council earns £100k every hour of every day – £100k is the crumbs that fall from the British Council’s table to the ‘wider international education sector’.

What Levant Education and many others* have learnt is this: For UK SME’s and entrepreneurs in international education engaging UKTI to help in international markets, the British Council will indeed step in to ‘support’. If the export project is successful and set to provide a return on investment for the SME, the British Council will then exploit its position to channel those business opportunities for itself, quickly snuffing out competition from the SME that created the project in the first place.

Conflict of interest is the nice term for this behaviour… If the British Council is serious about helping to create opportunities for UK businesses, working with UKTI, it must cease to compete with those same UK businesses, for those same business opportunities.

*for example, a group of UK companies tried, in vain, to seek address for the problem with Lord Green at BIS and the FCO in 2012:

It is the experience of those companies represented here that the BC finds it hard to demonstrate any competitive neutrality. The BC, as a supplier of services in its own right, increasingly competes with other UK providers, with the almost inevitable conflict of interest.

Although the BC provides the clearest example there is a widespread perception that a number of other grant-funded, quasi government agencies and organisations are also beginning to present market conflicts and issues. These agencies are not competitively neutral and there is no level playing field when it comes to their operations and practice abroad. They significantly increase, especially during competitive procurement, the costs and risks for others both those already participating in as well as those considering and entering the market. These agencies are also perceived to have access to more current information, support and contacts abroad than other non-subsidised, commercial providers. This latter issue has been a long standing complaint common to most providers, and thus far, successive Governments have failed to address or recognise it.

Neil McIntosh, Chief Executive, CfBT Education Trust

Graham Able, CEO, Alpha Plus Group

David Blackie, Managing Director, International Education Connect Ltd

Barry Brooks, Group Strategy Director, Tribal Group

Marian Brooks, Executive Director, Mott MacDonald, Cambridge Education

Andrew Fitzmaurice, CEO, Nord Anglia Plc

Ian Hunt, Managing Director, Gabbitas

Simon Lebus, Group Chief Executive, Cambridge Assessment

Kevin McNeany, Chairman, Orbital Education Ltd

Peter Miller, President Learning Solutions, Pearson International

Professor James Tooley, EG West Centre, Newcastle University

Report: Studybritish.com events in Baku

April 15, 2016May 7, 2017levanteducation

Last week top UK Universities returned to Baku with the Studybritish.com Education Tour, held at the JW Absheron Marriott Hotel on April 8 and 9.

Above: Images from the Alumni evening at Baku Marriot Hotel

Despite the devalued Manat and suspended Scholarship Programme, interest in studying in the UK was high and the exhibition was well attended. The group also visited ADA University, and on Friday evening a lively Alumni Reception was held, with over 70 UK Alumni attending.

Above: Images from the student recruitment event at Baku Marriott Hotel

Levant Education continues to be committed to Azerbaijan, working with universities on a variety of levels: networking, alumni events, recruitment events and market analysis. The majority of Levant’s clients use its services to improve brand awareness and direct recruitment, an increasingly important channel for university recruitment to the UK.

The Studybritish.com Exhibition and related events will return to Baku in October.

The Independent Complaints Body Verita will soon publish its report into the behaviour of the British Council in Azerbaijan in particular. Levant Education agreed cooperation with the British Council to launch UK-focussed events in Azerbaijan and Turkey in 2012, and paid UKTI for support services. The British Council then used that cooperation and support to launch a competing events, despite assurances of support and non-competition.

Unfair Competition and the British Council

July 7, 2015April 26, 2016levanteducation

Thank you for following the link and for your support in addressing unfair competition from the government agency / entrepreneurial business known as the British Council.

I am compiling the experiences of genuinely entrepreneurial UK companies that have come up against competition from the British Council, while acting as part of the FCO and often presented as a supportive agency for UK companies looking to grow in international markets.

In our own example, Levant Education set up UK Education Exhibitions and paid for support from UKTI to enter new markets (Turkey, Azerbaijan and Iraq) which brought in the British Council to ‘assist’. Despite assurances that they would not seek to compete, they ‘cooperated’ with our projects for a short time before setting up carbon-copy exhibitions the following year, in Turkey and Azerbaijan. Only war and financial problems in Kurdistan prevented them from doing the same there.

The British Council used its ‘gatekeeper’ and FCO personnel & offices to exploit our business and ultimately compete with massive government-brand advantages the private sector could never match. This is fundamentally an issue of unfair competition and conflict of interest, as has been identified in the 2014 FCO Triennial Review.

The stories will be used to create a record of the BC’s unfair and predatorial business practices, and may be used to inspire journalists to investigate the uneven playing field we face in the international education sector.

Please keep the stories as concise as possible. They will be added to this website and if used in any other way, we will contact you for approval.

Is the British Council ‘Entrepreneurial’?

April 20, 2015April 26, 2016levanteducation

In 1946 George Orwell warned authors against making money from writing propaganda for bodies such as the British Council, deeming such work a waste of creative energy. Nonetheless, in recent times, it seems that those writing propaganda for the Council’s commercial activities have been reading Orwell’s novel ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’.

When defending its aggressive commercial plans and arguing for continued grant-in-aid funding from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), the British Council has sought praise for its ‘entrepreneurial‘ model of public sector finance.

Think of the word entrepreneurial and terms like ‘risk taking’, ‘new venture’, ‘private finance’, ‘creative’ and innovation’ come to mind. Let’s compare British Council with a genuine UK business to see which truly represents the spirit of entrepreneurialism:

The British Council

The British Council doesn’t have to worry about start up costs or financing: it is underwritten by the taxpayer to the tune of £160 million per year. It commercially exploits its government branding and facilities, and is largely unaccountable.
The British Council is a government agency with a government brand, funded by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom, with a related political agenda.
The British Council has the instant support of Ambassadors, Consul Generals and UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) offices around the world to support its business, at no cost, to the detriment of fair competition. Any education / training company approaching UKTI/FCO for international assistance will be asked to work with a competing organisation – the British Council.
The British Council pays no tax, thanks to its ‘charity‘ status and a complex network of international business entities that makes Starbucks envious.
British Council employees (whether working for the public good or on BC cash generating business) benefit from a full Civil Service Pension scheme, paid for by the British taxpayer.
The British Council stifles competition by using its government brand, taxpayer funding, tax-avoiding global network of companies, and government FCO privileges to maximise income from its marketing, events and language businesses.

Levant Education

Levant Education was started using the private savings of its Director, David Mitchell, after 10 years spent working in International Education marketing. Every project or venture it undertakes must take account of the business risk and customer satisfaction.
Levant Education is a British company, working to build a brand based on quality events, marketing & recruitment, and education projects in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iraq and Iran. It is a private limited company, independent of the UK government, working closely with governments where it is active, for example in Azerbaijan.
Levant Education pays UKTI for overseas market introduction services (OMIS), which unavoidably brings-in the British Council team in that market. The British Council then shamelessly goes after our business for itself.
Levant Education pays tax in the UK as a registered UK company.
Levant Education employs and pays its employees with no state benefits required.
Levant Education competes in its sector on a fair and even playing field – one which the British Council distorts and exploits.

Is the British Council ‘entrepreneurial‘? Only in a world where 2 + 2 = 5, Freedom is Slavery, and

Entrepreneurialism

Monopolistic, Unaccountable,
State-Sponsored, Unfair Trade

George Osborne hits out at “anti-business” charities

October 6, 2014October 14, 2014levanteducation

Charity may well begin at home, but Ministers who bravely encourage others to throw stones at the gilded atriums of charitable enterprise should first take care that they do not themselves live in a house with a massive conservatory hidden round the back.

George Osborne has identified ‘charities’ as a barrier to fair competition in the marketplace, and has urged companies to defend the economy against their “anti-business views.”

The chancellor called on business leaders to raise their heads “above the parapet” and fight back against charities and others who he said were making arguments against the free market and standing in the way of economic prosperity.

Speaking at the Institute of Directors in London, just yards from the British Council HQ at Spring Gardens, Osborne told the annual convention: “You have to get out there and put the business argument, because there are plenty of pressure groups, plenty of trade unions and plenty of charities and the like, that will put the counter view”.

“It is, I know, a difficult decision sometimes to put your head above the parapet, but that is the only way we are going to win this argument for an enterprising, business, low-tax economy that delivers prosperity for the people and generations to come.

“There is a big argument in our country … about our future, about whether we are a country that is for business, for enterprise, for the free market.”

If George Osborne wants an example of a ‘charity’ standing in the way of fair play and economic prosperity, he doesn’t need to look very far… the Foreign Office, his neighbours in Whitehall, have a real corker.

Is there a ‘charity’ anywhere in the world that is guiltier of anti-business practices than the British Council, the anachronistic government quango / ‘charity’ that pockets a £180 million annual grant from the UK taxpayer, earns from its education businesses a further £750 million without paying a penny in tax, enjoys free use of government facilities and personnel around the world, and is free to exploit its government status, links, and brand for a tidy almost billion pound income at the expense of genuine British companies who lack such privileges?

Levant Education has consistently put its ‘head above the parapet’, and looks forward to the support of Mr Osborne and his pro-business colleagues in the cabinet. We are a prime example of an entrepreneurial company that has seen its seen its business eroded thanks to a taxpayer funded ‘charity’ acting as gatekeeper and supportive government body to begin with, only to then go after that same business without mercy.

As long as the government continues to oblige the British Council to be largely self-financing, encouraging it to compete unfairly against UK education providers and education service companies (education marketing firms, publishers, testing companies, language training providers, etc) how can anyone take Mr Osborne seriously when he talks about winning the argument against anti-business, anti- competitive charities? The treasury and the FCO should lead by example before encouraging others to raise their heads above the parapet.

The good news is that there is currently a further review being undertaken of the British Council by the Foreign Office, after the FCO Triennial Review Report published earlier this year identified unfair competition, remit mission creep, and lack of accountability issues. These issues have resulted in a total lack of trust in UKTI or British Embassy/Consulate services in the eyes of education sector businesses, who have engaged with the FCO in good faith, only to lose any gains to the entrepreneurial, but not-so-charitable-after-all, British Council.

There is now, therefore, an excellent opportunity for Mr. Osborne and the present government to put its own house in order when it comes to the free market and anti-competitive ‘charities’.

UK Education Tour or the British Council?

July 14, 2014July 14, 2014levanteducation

Levant Education presents a handy guide to choosing between the 2 events that are now on offer in Kurdistan, Iraq.

UK Education Tour

Successful UK-focussed exhibitions in Kurdistan since 2011
Feedback, references available – universities already signed up for OCT 2014
Free cancellation in the event of HCDP cancellation or security issues
Well known in the region by universities, government and students
Investing in local language teaching and enrolment support
Operated by Levant Education, a UK registered business
Suitable for direct recruitment or working with your agency
Independent company working with no ties to the UK government

British Council in Kurdistan

No exhibition experience
No track record or references
Event not confirmed
Pulled out of its Erbil teaching operation (last month)
Underwritten by UK taxpayer money
Complicated international network of business entities for tax efficiency (avoidance).
No experience in international HE marketing or recruitment
Part of British government foreign policy
A history of incompetence in exhibition administration

At the last UK Education Tour in Kurdistan, hotel event managers informed us that British Council staff had been in to visit, researching our events, our operations, how we put together our successful events. If you have to ask, you’ll never know…

The British Council is an anachronistic unaccountable quango…it’s time for a cull

May 16, 2014May 20, 2014levanteducation

Along with many UK private companies providing marketing services to international education providers, Levant Education often runs into a thorny political issue that we’re somehow not supposed to talk about.

That issue is the commercial, entrepreneurial activities of the British Council, a Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB, or quango), whose size, status and ambition create an unfair playing field in the sector.

The British Council often pretends to support UK companies’ efforts to promote UK education internationally, when in reality it competes for that business itself. So fair competition is virtually impossible, as small specialist companies (with the potential to make a real difference) are squeezed out.

As a competitor for Levant Education’s business (in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Kurdistan they followed us into the market), the British Council benefits from advantages we couldn’t dream of – £175 million from the taxpayer, government branding, as well as a network of ambassadorial staff and facilities that are impossible to ring-fence between what is charitable and what is commercial. In all 3 markets, the British Council sheepishly spoke of cooperation as we took the risks to establish the business, only to then wolfishly go after that same business for itself.

We do not pay our taxes for the government to pay quangos to go into business against legitimate UK companies, with huge commercial / tax advantages. Whatever the rationale was for establishing the British Council back in the 1930’s, the world has moved on.

An eternal optimist and believer in the democratic process, I took the complaint to the House of Commons, with MP for Mid Derbyshire Pauline Latham OBE. Among other issues, Pauline is known for supporting the culling of badgers…what would she think of the way the British Council threatens healthy competition in the field of international education?

The MP agreed that the British Council’s behavior needed looking into, and tabled a parliamentary question. Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, Hugo Swire, answered the question, drawing attention to the Triennial Review of the British Council that he had announced on 16^th July 2013. This Review would look at the continuing logic for maintaining the quango, and address “competition questions relating to British Council income generation activity.” The resulting report would be published “in early 2014”. (reponse_hugo_swire)

The complaint was also put to UKTI, which often (misguidedly) brings in the British Council in cases where UK education companies pay for export assistance abroad, as Levant Education has. The investment in UKTI assistance is subsequently wasted, as the business generated from the activity falls into the lap of the entrepreneurial British Council.

In a letter to Levant Education, Lord Green, at the time outgoing Minister of State (Trade & Investment), also deflected the question by referring to the ongoing Triennial Review (we now await the view of Baron Livingstone of Parkhead, also known as Ian, who now serves in that role).

So far so good for the British democratic process. In the markets where we operate, people can only dream of such openness of government, efficiency and access to parliamentary procedure in defence of individual freedoms. In Turkey I’d probably get a punch in the face for even trying…if I was lucky.

Not only are our MP’s quick to help and put our concerns to the right people, government has a system to ensure that NDPB’s / quangos are answerable to parliament and regular reviews are undertaken resulting in published reports. Such examples of public accountability strengthen our democracy and show our system of government in a good light, which it could certainly do with.

What is a Triennial Review?

Triennial Reviews are part of the democratic oversight process of Non Departmental Public Bodies (NDPB’s). The Reviews keep the NDPB’s / quangos accountable and ensure they remain useful and relevant.

According to Government guidance, published by the Cabinet Office,

“One of the founding principles of the reviews is transparency. The guidance stipulates that the review itself should be open and transparent, and that a report must be published at the end of the review that details the evidence and rationale for decisions about the body’s future. Departments publish these reports online and announce their publication to Parliament”.

In a further advisory, the cabinet office stipulates, “all reviews should be completed quickly and all reports of reviews should be published”.

Specifically on announcing results of the reviews, the Cabinet Office advice says

12.1 As a minimum, Departments should announce the outcomes of reviews by Written Ministerial Statement. This should be in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

12.2 The results of reviews should be published. Copies should be placed in the Libraries of the House. A copy of the announcement and of all relevant publications should also be made available to the relevant departmental select committee.

So that’s clear then – reports must be announced and published. The Review about the BC was undertaken in a timely fashion, lead by Mr Graham Glover at the FCO. Evidence was taken from a wide range of stakeholders, and the public was invited to give evidence though an online survey.

Openness, transparency, accountable, timely – the British way! No hiding place for those that would seek to hide from democratic accountability!

And yet…

Here we are in May 2014, with no sign of the report…

Thanks to the vigilance of David Blackie of International Education Connect Ltd, we know exactly what has gone wrong. The Board of the British Council has received the report, but its Chief Executive Martin Davidson doesn’t want to share it – not with the House of Commons, not with the House of Lords, and not with the British public who pay his £190,000 salary and associated expenses.

Mr. Glover and his team spent 3 months on the Review, listened to hundreds of stakeholders and received much evidence. Any mortal quango would by now have complied with the principled guidance of the British government and published…but not the British Council.

If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.

The Discussion Paper of the Review opens with the words of William Hague, British Foreign Secretary. “It is the duty of any government to ensure that all public bodies perform as effectively and efficiently as possible.” It ends with the words “the Review Team will decide on the content and recommendations of the final report”.

But Mr. Davidson thinks he knows better. In his words, he describes the final report as “an initial draft”, which is “very very long.” Apparently the report needs to be redacted, and no doubt sexed up, to produce a happier ending (happier for the BC and all those at Grade E and above who are trying to award themselves pay rises...).

Such behaviour may be common in the ‘democracies’ of Turkey and Central Asia, but this is the British government, and the British Council, we are talking about. How is it possible that the British Council and Mr. Davidson are free to suppress / redact / edit an independent report into their organisation, when the government guidance so clearly states that the “open and transparent” Review should “provide a robust challenge of the continuing need for individual NDPB’s – both their functions and form.”

Could it be that the Report is a little too robust about the continuing need for taxpayers to keep underwriting a billion pound marketing, teaching and language testing business (that pays no tax)? Most probably…but we’re not allowed to see the report until Mr Davidson has made it much, much shorter.

Do the principles of openness, accountability, transparency and democratic oversight not apply to Martin Davidson or the British Council?

Anybody..?

British Council Baku Exhibition targets Filipinos

October 17, 2013October 17, 2013levanteducation

Readers interested in the activities of the British Council in Azerbaijan will be aware that the bungling branch of the British FCO in Baku decided to actually do something for the first time in 20 years, spurred into action after witnessing Levant Education’s UK Education Tour last November. Invited to participate in the event in a spirit of mutuality, they approached the UK university exhibitors to tap them up for a rival event to be launched in 2013.

Reassuringly for Levant Education and the UK Education Tour (back in Baku next week), we again have a strong line up of UK universities, including UCL, Manchester, Warwick, Birmingham and Sheffield, who have a full programme of institution visits, an Alumni & VIP reception at the British Embassy, and UK exhibition and seminars.

The time has come for the British Council to promote their event, and collect registrations. Interestingly, data being requested from registering students includes ‘first language’, with the options being Chinese, English, Filipino, French, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.

All common first (or second) languages in Azerbaijan, bien sur! We’d have gone for Azeri or Russian, but what do we know?!

The ‘how did you hear about us’ answers also reveal that part of their marketing campaign includes advertising on ‘clickthecity.com’ – an out-and-about website for those out-and-about in … Manila, Philippines.

It’s always good to be reminded that the British Council isn’t really malicious, just incompetent. Or just maybe the power of the BC brand will work its magic, and exhibitors at their Azerbaijan event in November will be deluged by enquiries from Filipinos!