Mind your language: British Council to hone English of govt schoolteachers

The British Council--the UK's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities--will soon be training over 30,000 government school teachers across Maharashtra in English teaching.
This initiative follows an MoU with the state government earlier this year to strengthen educational and cultural cooperation between the UK and India. The idea is to improve English teaching and enhance employability skills in schools and training institutes.

In the past, the British Council had partnered with the state government and Tata Trusts for a similar initiative titled Project TEJAS that aims to improve the quality of English-language learning in primary schools in Maharashtra. Launched in 2016, this ongoing five-year-long endeavour sees teachers form both physical and digital communities of practice in their local areas through Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs) which enables them to develop their language ability, teaching skills, knowledge and experience.

Run by voluntary coordinators, these TAGs not only meet up once a month for practice but also share ideas to make learning more effective and hone their language skills through WhatsApp groups. "This results in more motivated teachers who take part in a culture of sharing and learning which results in improved quality of teaching and learning in the classroom," says Helen Silvester, director, West India, British Council, adding the project which will run till 2021 aims to train 48,000 teachers. So far, 18,000 teachers have been trained.

Over the last year, there have been 12 such partnerships between higher education institutions in Maharashtra with the UK under the bilateral UK India Education and Research Initiative. So far, these partnerships have resulted in young researchers and students from the state travelling regularly to UK for higher education and professional development through scholarships from the UK like Commonwealth, Chevening, GREAT and CWILT.

Most recently, the British Council's 70th Anniversary Scholarships helped 14 young women from Maharashtra pursue master's degrees in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in the UK. Given the fresh shadow cast on bilateral relations by the UK's decision to keep India out of the revised list of countries eligible for easier student visas, these partnerships could potentially be seen as rays of hope.