The British Council is the world’s leading cultural relations organisation and creates opportunities for people in the UK and worldwide to understand each other, to work together and learn from one another. We see this as crucial to building secure, more prosperous and sustainable futures for us all. We build trust and understanding between different countries and cultures and develop strong international links that are of benefit to people in Britain and the rest of the world. We call this work – cultural relations.

Education & Society

The Education and Society Strategic Business Unit (SBU) is one of 3 SBUs. The others are Arts and English and Examinations.

Our vision for Education and Society is: A world where all people have opportunities to broaden their horizons and build their futures through international education and more open societies.

By 2020 E&S will be working with over 250 million people through various income streams (contracts, partnerships, paid for services and products). We work in the following eight platforms to engage people across the world with the UK and develop new and deeper relationships that deliver impact overseas and in the UK:

-   Education - Higher Education, Schools, Science and Research, Skills,

-   Society - Access to Justice, Civil Society and Governance (including Sport), Social Enterprise, Gender and Inclusion.

Equality Comment

Valuing diversity is essential to the British Council’s work. We aim to abide by and promote equality legislation by following both the letter and the spirit of it to try and avoid unjustified discrimination, recognising discrimination as a barrier to equality of opportunity, inclusion and human rights.

All staff worldwide are required to ensure their behaviour is consistent with our policies.

The Head of UK Engagement represents all UK-facing aspects of British Council China Education work. The post holder will report directly to the Director Education in China but will be physically located within the Education and Society team in London.

The postholder will help grow the UK’s education partnerships with China. The UK education sector, particularly in higher education, has extensive and hugely significant collaboration with China. Our strategic ambition is by 2020 to have enabled the UK education sector to broaden and self-sustain its education partnerships with Chinese institutions. This post is key to delivering on that ambition by supporting UK education institutions and sector bodies, individually and collectively, to directly engage with China. This will include:

-   Leading the team’s engagement with the University sector (Universities UK International as well as Mission Groups such as the Russell Group, Universities Alliance, Million Plus etc), the skills sector (e.g. the Association of Colleges, Colleges Wales, UK Skills Federation etc), the schools sector, as well as managing specific institution accounts.

-   Supporting the Director Education’s lead engagement with BEIS / DfE and the Devolved Administrations. This includes representing the team on the BEIS / DfE-led UK-China Education Strategy Group and with the Chinese Embassy in London.

-   In doing so, to support UK institutions to understand the education partnership opportunities in China and how best to act on them, as well as growing the UK’s capacity to open up new or broader areas of engagement with China. This involves working closely with both the wider UK and China teams in the British Council to ensure that two-way flow of opportunities is understood and maximised on.

The post holder will need to be prepared to spend sufficient time in China to perform the duties of this UK-facing role effectively. This includes investing time at the start of the role as part of induction and refreshing that throughout the role as is necessary. This is likely to involve 3 or more trips to China a year.

-   Experience in a leadership role

-   Experience in education policy or programme development at a strategic level

-   Experience of successfully developing and implementing new strategies

-   Experience in managing high level relationships with partners

-   Pay Band 8

-   London Market Allowance

-   Generous pension contributions

-   32 days annual leave