When the UK departed the Erasmus+ scheme at the moment it left the European Union, there were justifiable cries of protest. Losing an exchange programme that enabled young people to enrich their education in Europe was one more needless loss, one more piece of collateral damage self-incurred as a result of the Conservatives’ hard Brexit. But Erasmus+ did not provide good value for money, said the universities minister, Michelle Donelan, and anyway the government would be creating an even better programme, Turing, to create exchanges for young people not just in Europe, but worldwide.
The scheme was duly set up by the British Council. But earlier this month the Guardian revealed that Capita will be running the scheme from next year, having undercut the British Council by an unknown sum when the project was put out to tender. So it is that a scheme designed to build relationships between British and overseas students will be run not by the public body in charge of enhancing the UK’s reputation abroad, but by a giant outsourcing firm – one that has turned its hand, not always successfully, to everything from running London’s congestion charge zone to England’s cervical smear programme (the latter was brought back in-house by the NHS in 2019 after serious blunders were made).
The British Council was set up in 1934, in an era of political instability and rising fascism in Europe. The politicians of the time wisely saw that there were better ways of promoting Britishness than doing it directly through propaganda. Instead, the council would build trust on the ground through cultural links and the power of education. In many important ways this has worked – whether through the personal links forged through, say, Russian and British writers meeting in the dark days of the cold war, or by the scores of UK theatre shows seen by overseas producers through British Council showcases, or the legions of people who have learned English through its international teaching hubs, which remain the organisation’s most important and lucrative business, though hard hit by the Covid pandemic.
As in the case of the BBC World Service, it has sometimes been tempting, domestically, to undervalue an organisation that is seen to deliver most of its benefits abroad. Of course, it does deliver benefits at home, since it’s good for all Britons when the UK is seen in a positive light globally. Nevertheless, the British Council has had to absorb damaging funding cuts.
Setting up an international student exchange programme during a pandemic is no joke, and it will take time to see whether it proves to be a success – or not. All eyes will be on how much take-up there is in the post-Covid era and what quality of experience Capita is capable of offering. There will be scrutiny, too, of the government’s commitment to the scheme, and the level of its future funding. In the meantime, it seems bizarre and self-sabotaging for the government to have removed this work from an organisation that is exceptionally well placed to deliver it – an organisation whose aims are building trust between the UK and its partners across the world, not maximising profits for shareholders.