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President’s Report for Sept 2004 AGM of the British Association for Chinese Studies,

Chinese Studies in Schools
Efforts have continued to pursue the lobbying agenda since last year, but with slow progress. A meeting planned with the Secretary of State, Charles Clarke for 10 February was cancelled at the last minute due to another engagement, the launch of the British Council's Global Gateway. During this launch, Carol and I spent five minutes with the Secretary of State, who suggested contacting him again to set up another meeting. However, we took the opportunity to establish contact with Judith Hemery of the British Council, who Jenny Clegg and Carol met on 2 June for a discussion about the overlaps between the BC and BACS' work. Judith Hemery outlined the BC's China programme with particular focus on its Schools Link component, and also mentioned tentative talks with Hanban about following up the GCSE Mandarin course book with materials at AS or A-level.

Her advice to BACS was to:-

• give up our attempts to work through DfID and the DEA, since their emphasis is on poverty reduction which is too restrictive for China
• contact more junior members of DfES to make the case for China, since Charles Clarke's emphasis on an 'international' agenda tends to mean US/EU/Southern Africa, and not China
• with a 30% cutback of staff, the DfES is not going to develop a new stream of funding for 'China', so BACS would be advised to focus on the existing organisations they work with (eg CILT, SST, DEA, etc.), to argue the case for including China in the global dimension of the DfES's current work.

In response to this Jenny and Carol wrote to Clive Tucker and Marie Niven, (Lifelong Learning Directorate of DfES and international relations respectively) to ask for a meeting to ask for their help to set up further meetings with key people from the QCA and DfES to discuss China in the school curriculum. This letter was sent in mid- August, but with no response so far.

I held parallel discussions with Ben Chapman, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Committee for Chinese Affairs, on 15 July. Ben's advice was very similar to Judith Hemery's, namely to focus our efforts on more junior members of the DfES. He agreed that the BACS initiative does address key needs in the school curriculum that are not being met by other programmes, and suggested contacting the DfES to help us set up a meeting towards the end of September.

One aspect of our discussions, and including Simon Jones, has been the issue of how and when to approach the business sector to solicit support for our case. Our current view is that given the acknowledged importance of and need for grounded information about China in the school curriculum, it is in the first instance the DfES's responsibility to take the issue seriously. Once we have got somewhere with this, we shall then be in a position to think more strategically about approaches to HSBC and others.

Our resources and time are always limited, so once again, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Carol and Jenny for their hard work on this project.

HEFCE/SHEFCE
John Farrant, of UNIVERSITAS Higher Education Management Consultants, has been asked to appraise how well each of the HEFCE initiative's objectives has been met. He has already been in contact with some academics, maybe all, by making visits to the seven funded universities, 'to establish on the ground what actually has happened, for comparison with the plans submitted for funding.' He has written to Carol and me to say that UNIVERSITAS would be glad to receive a BACS contribution to his evaluation by September 10th. I have recently circulated a brief report based on my notes of the meeting BACS held in June 2003 with relevant HoDs, and shall forward an amended version of this to UNIVERSITAS amendments by September 10th.

UKCASA
At its last Council meeting in July, we agreed to a small subscription (£50) for membership of the UKCASA. This body has requested a visit from one of HEFCE's RAE team to talk about RAE2008, pencilled in for January 14 2005. One representative and one 'non-voting' member of each Area Studies Association will be able to attend this meeting. In the last JEASC committee meeting, I and the other two Presidents further agreed that we would push for some East Asian studies representation on at least some, if not all of the main panels.

ESRC
Gary Williams of the ESRC has recently written to me inviting BACS' contribution to a major strategic review by the ESRC. The outcome of the review will be key strategic priorities for future investments by the Council. The initial deadline set was September 10th, but this has now been extended to early October. I will be circulating a draft response to this invitation to relevant members within the next ten days. Given our failure to win the Council's support with our last China programme proposal, it is imperative that we make the necessary effort again to argue for our area.

AHRB
Via Bonnie McDougall, now panel member of the AHRB, we have received information about an AHRB initiative to hold a seminar on the arts and humanities in the autumn, in anticipation of the AHRB becoming a research Council. The seminar's organisers are keen to present examples of research that is 'particularly innovative and exciting' that provides a picture of the latest developments in the arts and humanities. I'd be grateful for any feedback on this, either now, or during the Council meeting, that can be passed on to Bonnie.

Finally my thanks again to Council members, and particularly to Carol and Lynn for their customary efficiency and support.

Harriet Evans

Secretary’s Report Sept 2004

We are most grateful to Frances Weightman, who agreed to take over the editorship of the BACS Bulletin this year, and who has done a splendid job. Also to Laura Rivkin, who has continued to manage the BACS website. Unfortunately, my application to the British Council China Grants to fund an extension of the website for a schools page was not successful – the scheme has been discontinued. Katherine Carruthers, however, coordinator of the Specialist Schools Trust Chinese Network, has set up both a web page and an email discussion group for teachers of Chinese language, so it is hoped that by helping with material for that page and linking to it from the BACS website, that effort will in any case not be wasted.

As announced in the Bulletin this year, I have established an email discussion list for BACS. www.jiscmail.ac.uk I hope this will grow into a useful forum for people to make announcements to or enquiries of the BACS membership. It may also develop into a discussion forum, though I will try to avoid it developing into a duplicate of other email forums (the Mandarin Teachers Discussion Forum, the CPN, the MCLC and H-Asia list, for example.) The list will therefore try to stick to BACS- related and items of general UK (rather than international) interest.

Paul Dimelow and Lin Yi have been productive co-convenors of the China Postgraduate Network this year – the email network of the CPN is very active. They are building a website for the group, and have convened a number of seminars across the country. Many thanks to them for their efforts.

Carol Rennie