Hi Bloggers,
The British Council has a fairly bizarre method of recruitment, in that all contracts are only for fixed periods. There are no permanent jobs. Also, most centres insist that teachers move on every four years. So when a teacher or manager's time comes, it is hardly surprising that a certain amount of insecurity occurs. One of the ways some managers resolve this situation is through developing a clique system. Effectively, they can rotate jobs or create new posts so that friends can stay on. In many ways this is an unfortunate scenario, yet at the same time is an intelligent solution to a problem that the British Council creates for itself. A great example of this is seen in Bangkok. You can be sure that many of the managers there will still be there ten years from now. They will control everything in the foreseeable future. Non-clique members, on the other hand, will have difficulty establishing themselves. Bahrain also provided an excellent example when they had the ex-Sri Lanka clique, which was then replaced by a group more defined by age than anything else. Ageism, incidentally, is rampant within the BC.
One way this is maintained is through the job interview system, since all interviews and positions are based on a competency test rather than a holistic assessment of the candidate. As a result the system can easily be manipulated. For example, it's very easy to massage the results of an interview and claim that on a particular day a candidate performed better than another one. A holistic interview, which might include age, character, commitment, years of service, contributions to date, etc, would be more difficult to twist. I experienced this myself when I was in Bahrain. The dominant clique at the time basically saw me as too old and as not fitting in with their particular vision. Basically, it was ageism. Despite having been with the BC for seven years and having had my Diploma for over two years, a younger teacher who hadn't even completed her first two year contract was given the coordinator position on offer over me. Needless to say she was a clique member.
Thus generally making progress within the BC is a very precarious business and depends largely on who likes you and who doesn't. In some ways that's human nature, but one would have hoped that an organisation like the BC would have a better system, in which a teacher could develop his career in a much more progressive kind of way rather than depend on the hit or miss system currently in place.
The British Council has a fairly bizarre method of recruitment, in that all contracts are only for fixed periods. There are no permanent jobs. Also, most centres insist that teachers move on every four years. So when a teacher or manager's time comes, it is hardly surprising that a certain amount of insecurity occurs. One of the ways some managers resolve this situation is through developing a clique system. Effectively, they can rotate jobs or create new posts so that friends can stay on. In many ways this is an unfortunate scenario, yet at the same time is an intelligent solution to a problem that the British Council creates for itself. A great example of this is seen in Bangkok. You can be sure that many of the managers there will still be there ten years from now. They will control everything in the foreseeable future. Non-clique members, on the other hand, will have difficulty establishing themselves. Bahrain also provided an excellent example when they had the ex-Sri Lanka clique, which was then replaced by a group more defined by age than anything else. Ageism, incidentally, is rampant within the BC.
One way this is maintained is through the job interview system, since all interviews and positions are based on a competency test rather than a holistic assessment of the candidate. As a result the system can easily be manipulated. For example, it's very easy to massage the results of an interview and claim that on a particular day a candidate performed better than another one. A holistic interview, which might include age, character, commitment, years of service, contributions to date, etc, would be more difficult to twist. I experienced this myself when I was in Bahrain. The dominant clique at the time basically saw me as too old and as not fitting in with their particular vision. Basically, it was ageism. Despite having been with the BC for seven years and having had my Diploma for over two years, a younger teacher who hadn't even completed her first two year contract was given the coordinator position on offer over me. Needless to say she was a clique member.
Thus generally making progress within the BC is a very precarious business and depends largely on who likes you and who doesn't. In some ways that's human nature, but one would have hoped that an organisation like the BC would have a better system, in which a teacher could develop his career in a much more progressive kind of way rather than depend on the hit or miss system currently in place.
