British Council takes another step in English education in SL
Gill Caldicott
The British Council Sri Lanka’s latest project has as its mission the improvement of the quality of English language education. It aims to enhance students’ access to good education and employment opportunities, by improving the quality of the teaching of English, the language most commonly used in higher education and the private sector.
The Teacher Education for English Project (TEE) will complement the British Council’s Improving Teacher Education in Sri Lanka project, which focuses on the professional development and skills of teacher educators. Both projects come under the British Council’s overarching TRANSFORM education programme. TEE will target large numbers of English language teachers and trainee teachers in the country over the project’s 14-month duration, ending April 2019. The target audience in the first stage will be 1000 trainee teachers enrolled in the four National Colleges of Education in Mahaweli, Kalutara, Jaffna, and Peradeniya.
A team of six British Council trainers arrived in the country in January this year. After a briefing in Colombo, they were deployed to the four colleges and the project commenced in the second week of February. These trainers are working closely with college faculty to ensure that they also cover the regular curriculum in these colleges.
K.M. H. Bandara
They will deliver 120 hours of combined English language upgrade and teaching methodology to the English language teacher trainees in their colleges. This aims to raise the teachers’ levels of English from A2 to B1 and to develop their practical teaching language for communication.
The TEE project was made possible due to generous funding by renowned corporate leader Ricky Mendis. He shares the British Council’s vision for a thriving, globally connected sri Lanka. “As the private sector’s focus of business is international, a good working knowledge of English is a key factor for employment,” he stated, adding also that he felt a need “to help at least a new generation of potential employees to get a sound grasp of the English language.”
“There is no better institution to carry out such a programme than the British Council. I decided to fund this in its entirety in the hope that we will see a new generation of competent English users who in turn will pass on their skills to generations to come.”
At the launch of the project held at the British Council library, Gill Caldicott, Country Director British Council Sri Lanka pointed out that “English, without a doubt, is the key skill for the 21st century. Every country in the world that wants to participate in the global economy needs a trained and skilled workforce that can operate in English as well as in the national languages. The government of Sri Lanka has recognized this and, as a result, we at the British Council are helping to support reforms which will lead to systematic and sustained improvements. Improved teaching and learning of English is one of the reforms.”
“We are very grateful to philanthropists like Ricky Mendis who have the understanding and the foresight to invest in teachers who are being trained in the system now and preparing to enter the teacher workforce. We advocate a two pronged approach: reforming the system for the longer term while investing in the teachers of today and tomorrow.”
The launch was also attended by K. M.H. Bandara, Chief Commissioner, Teacher Education, who expressed thanks, on behalf of the Ministry of Education, to Mr. Mendis for his generous contribution and the British Council for implementing the TEE.