As part of the continuing five-year collaboration between the British Council, the Algerian Ministry of National Education and Anadarko, an event will take place at the Algerian Embassy in London to celebrate two milestones on Friday 15 March.
The event will mark the achievement of passing 1500 teachers trained since 2008, and celebrate a new initiative which will bring 87 Middle school inspectors to the UK to experience best practice in UK Education systems.
Both of these programmes are part of a concerted effort to drive up standards of the teaching and learning of English in Algerian state schools so that young people gain the skills and voice to become global citizens.
This partnership was brought about in response to a need for teachers to be retrained in a more communicative, student centred methodology after an educational reform in 2003 which placed competencies rather than knowledge at the top of the learning agenda across the whole curriculum.
According to Lounis Tamrabet, head of the Algerian inspector delegation to the UK, “English language teaching has become the avant guard in terms of implementing this new approach and the outputs of teachers and inspectors of English in Algeria are being closely watched by educators of other subjects to help define the way forward. Therefore we have a great responsibility to take what we are learning in the UK and use it to lead the way”.
The first group of inspectors are currently in Norwich at the NILE institute (Norwich Institute for Language and Education) for their ten day programme which has involved excursions to local school and presentations by OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) and British Council.
In the final few days they will produce a number of tools designed to help teachers in various aspects of their work including their own continuous professional development. Three more groups will follow in April and May. Meanwhile, the teacher training programme in Algeria is set to expand this year with up to 900 teachers taking part in courses in 2013 leading to the new objective of 3000 teachers trained by the end of 2014.
Paul Phillips, the British Council’s English Project Manager in Algeria, said: "This programme is a perfect example of how the UK and Algeria can work together to raise standards in education and strengthen professional bodies through a greater sharing of best practice. Key to its success is a focus on outputs. The programme encourages the inspectors to find practical applications to what they learn and experience during their stay, focusing on adapting UK best practice to the specific needs and contexts of Algerian
For more information, please contact Nisha Pawar in the British Council Press Office on +44 (0)207 389 4967 or nisha.pawar@britishcouncil.org