Posted by Anooja in English for Progress.
Tags: British Council, British Council India, British Council Sri Lanka, education, efponline, ELT conference, employability skills, English for Progress, English Next India, Primary education, Rod Bolitho, teaching English
Hello everyone
It was a pleasure watching the conference sessions live online yesterday. I urge those of you who wanted to attend the conference but could not, to use this facility provided by British Council to watch it live and even take part in it by adding comments. You comments may get discussed.
I tuned in for some of the sessions. Some- like, ‘building skills for employability’- were gripping as well as hilarious. Especially the speech by Manish Sabharwal; was it eloquence epitomized! Some were eye openers–Policy implications for English teaching and learning. It was quite informative.
‘Policy implications for English teaching and learning’ dealt a lot with scenario in schools in different parts of India. I guess good English teaching and learning in schools will lead to ‘building employability skills’ in the long run! This points to the lacuna we have in India in this area.
Isn’t that one of the reasons that makes ‘building employability skills’ a necessity now? I have heard private school principals lamenting about the difficulty they face in recruiting good teachers. They have to place the good teachers in high school so that the 10th grade results are not compromised. So most often the worst teachers end up in the primary section.
Rod Bolitho, Academic Director of Norwich Institute for Language Education (NILE), raised many questions which I felt are very relevant.
Some questions, about the shortage of English teachers in India, are listed below.
- How attractive is teaching as a career in India in general?
- What is the reason behind the English graduates choosing fields other than teaching as profession?
- Is there any appropriate formulated initiative in India to raise the number of English teachers in training?
- Has the government decided what the probable number of teachers required to be trained is in order to meet the demand in, maybe, the next 10 years?
- Are there enough institutions training teachers?
Some others, about the quality of English teachers/education, are below.
- What is the minimum qualification for school teachers? Is there any standardisation of qualification for the primary school teachers teaching English across India?
- In some states the minimum qualification set for the teachers of English is far lower than the others. So is bad English being perpetuated through the system?
- What type of pre-service training do they undergo?
- What kind of training is going on in pre-service level and how practical is it?
- Are the pre-service training institutions calibrated completely against the needs of the teachers?
- Are the skills of the teacher educator the skills which are needed to produce methodologically and linguistically competent teachers?
What is your opinion on these issues? Please write in your comments, would love to hear your ideas.
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Posted by Philip Clegg in English for Progress.
Tags: British Council, British Council India, education, ELT conference, English for Progress, English Next India, in-service teacher training, NCTE, pre-service teacher training, Primary education, Project English, teaching English, Third Policy Dialogue
In the parallel session, ‘In-service and Pre-service English Language Teacher Education’, the room split into two groups to discuss the best way forward for in-service and pre-service teacher education.
One recomendation that came out was that Teacher Educators should come from schools and not from institutes or universities. They should be good teachers with a lot of practical experience and not traditional academics with doctorate degrees. What do you think?
Who is going to select these teachers? How to select them?
Should teachers be allowed to nominate themselves?
How do we replace the good teachers who we take out to become teacher educators?
Your comments please.
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Posted by niqueluz in English for Progress.
Tags: British Council India, English for Progress, Third Policy Dialogue
A brief outline of the issues covered by the two eminent speakers:
Krishna Dixit
At present there is no CPD policy in India, clearly a neglected area.
Why CPD?
1. Inadequate education
2. Facilitate change
3. Help teachers to prosper in ELT
How to motivate teachers ? How can the system help teachers embark on this lifelong journey?
Rod Bolitho: the notion of developement must come from within the individual.
‘continuous’ requires constant reinvention.
‘professional’ teaching as a real profession to be taken seriously. Teachers are typically challenged more than other professions .
‘development’ self-directed change and progress in individuals and institutions.
Echoing and touching upon what Dr. Martin Wedell “If the exams don’t change, nothing changes”.
We need a policy for a financial support as at the moment it operates on a ‘goodwill basis’.
‘Change Forces’ change is mandatory, but growth is optional.
So… as a teacher are you a hedgehog, a dinosaur or a chameleon?
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Posted by Philip Clegg in English for Progress.
Tags: British Council, British Council India, chane management, ELT conference, English for Progress, English Next India, Martin Wedell, teaching English, Third Policy Dialogue
Dr Martin Wedell, Senior Lecturer, University of Leeds presented a session around planning for change in education.
He said that we are better at planning for change than seeing change in practice.
He also said change is unlikely to be identically implemented and that ultimately it is what teachers do in classrooms that determines what changes have taken place.
The neglect of how people actually experience change as distinct from how it might have been intended is at the heart of the spectacular failure of most social and educational change policies.
Transition is a complex process – changing teachers to facilitators – we often think that training will take care of that. But it is also a matter of systemic support – both visible and invisible.
Societal expectations and assessment systems must also change as well as the teachers and their teaching to ensure successful change processes.
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Posted by niqueluz in English for Progress.
Tags: British Council, employability skills, English for Progress, Manish Sarbharwal, Third Policy Dialogue
In this session, one of the highlights of the two-day policy dialogue, Manish Sabharwal casually steers us down an enchanted river of laid back eloquence , deftly pointing out some big ideas along the way.
It’s a mesmirising speech on ‘Skills for Employablity’. Catch it here:
http://www.britishcouncil.org.in/efponline/sessions/19_3.html
Analogies like: Cambrian explosions, ovarian lotteries; thought worlds, policy orphans,; good is NOT the enemy of the great, bad is better than nothing.
What are your thoughts?
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Posted by Philip Clegg in English for Progress.
Tags: BPO, British Council, British Council India, CF, ELT conference, employability skills, English for Progress, English Next India, NASSCOM, Project English, Stephen Jenner, Third Policy Dialogue
Stephen Jenner, Deputy Head Corporate Training, British Council India, poses this question as one of the parallel speakers for the Session ‘Meeting the Recruitment Challenge’.
Stephen stresses the need for a global benchmarking tool and suggests the CEF, or rather ‘CF’ as it is more commonly being referred to.
Stephen summarises the BPO recruiter’s daily challenge:
1. I need people with good English, but what does that mean?
2. What exactly are the communication skills I need for this specific process?
3. What do I do with borderliners?
4. How do I transform new recruits into first class employees?
We would love to hear your ideas, suggestions and answers to these questions! Keep your comments coming in…
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Posted by Philip Clegg in English for Progress.
Tags: BPO, British Council, British Council India, David Graddol, ELT conference, employability skills, English for Progress, English Next India, Manish Sarbharwal, NASSCOM, teaching English, Team Lease, Third Policy Dialogue
I want to draw your attention to Manish Sabharwal’s presentation at the Third Policy Dialogue, Session 3, Building Skills for Employability. Manish is CEO and President of Team Lease.
Manish spoke with such eloquence, wit and at such breakneck speed, that he managed to keep us all on the edge of our seats straight after lunch! His talk is peppered with so many wonderful soundbytes that I urge you to view at it in your own time. Find out what he meant by ‘the ovarian lottery’ and why ’English is like (Microsoft) Windows.’
Enjoy!
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