A startling article this week in the Times laid bare the precarious financial state of the British Council. The organization is seeking to sell assets – including its famous art collection – to repay £200 million of debt, most of which appears to be owed to the UK’s Foreign Office.
According to CEO Scott McDonald, the British Council faces “a constant threat of insolvency.” The Times notes that in addition to the possible sale of its massive art collection, its leadership is “eyeing up which of the organisation’s foreign outposts can be put on the market.”
This all comes as one of the British Council’s biggest revenue generators – the IELTS test – faces stiff competition from new test makers at home and abroad. Some observers have suggested that competing test makers are somewhat more nimble and responsive to changes in technology and consumer tastes than the venerable IELTS partnership. Test volumes have also been impacted by the loss of longstanding monopolies in major score receiving markets.
Note that in 2021 the British Council sold its Indian IELTS operations to IDP Education for a cool £130 million (cash) and exited the testing industry in that key market. One wonders if similar deals could be reached in other important sending markets.
The British Council is not alone as it struggles with its finances. Several of the so-called legacy English testing companies have faced tough times in recent years. IDP Education announced massive layoffs in June of last year, while ETS offered buyouts to virtually every employee in the United States around the same time.
The British Council’s next annual report is due to be published by the end of this month, but it could be delayed.