The Confucius Institute for Scotland’s Schools: FOI release

Information requested

1. How much money has the Scottish Government given to the Confucius Institute for Scotland's schools since 2015/16?

2. A breakdown of these figures by year.

3. How much money has the Scottish Government received from the Chinese Government, Chinese ministry of education, or Chinese universities, in relation to Confucius Institute's for Scotland's schools since 2015/16?

4. A breakdown of these numbers by year.

5. A list of all official and recorded communications relating to Confucius Institutes for Scotland's schools since 2015/16.

Response

1-2. I can confirm that the Scottish Government has provided the Confucius Institute for Scotland's Schools with £5,333,388 in grant funding since the 2015-16 financial year.

This breaks down annually as follows:

Financial Year	Grant funding
2015-16	£754,000
2016-17	£754,000
2017-18	£754,000
2018-19	£754,000
2019-20	£678,600
2020-21	£568,269
2021-22	£550,519
2022-23	£520,000
Total	£5,333,388

3-4. I can confirm that the Scottish Government has received no money from the Chinese Government, Chinese Ministry of Education or Chinese universities in relation to the Confucius Institute for Scotland's Schools since 2015-16.

5. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.

A high-level search of our electronic records and document management system indicates that we hold over 3,100 files that refer to “CISS” or “Confucius”. To inspect every single one of these to confirm whether it was within the scope of the request, and to then compile these into a bespoke list, would significantly breach the cost limit.

Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may wish to consider submitting a narrower request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could specify the subject matter of the communications you are interested in, narrow the timeframe of your request, or restrict it to a specific business area of the Scottish Government. This would allow us to limit the searches and processing that would require to be conducted.

You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ on his website at:
http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.