The third year of the British Council PRELIM project, which creates partnerships between English UK members and teacher’s associations in the global south, marks a dramatic change in the nature of the programme. In March this year, 25 accredited language centres started delivering extended twelve months programmes to IATEFL affiliated teachers associations in 25 different countries.
This year’s project, funded by the Council to the tune of nearly £400,000 and managed by NILE Norwich, will concentrate on classroom resources and existing materials. And a glance at the participants shines a light on UK ELT post Covid.
The stand-out contribution is from the private language schools in Wales. Of the six non-chain language schools in the principality, no fewer than four, all based in Cardiff have been chosen to take part. They are listed here with the name of the country they are working with (in brackets). Capital School of English (Bangladesh), CELT Centres for ELT Cardiff (Palestine), Celtic English Academy (Mozambique) and Peartree languages (Indonesia). There are currently no chains operating in Wales.
There are also four non-chain schools representing London, a place with a population three times larger than the Welsh, and a lot more chains. The non-chain list comprises Wimbledon School of English (Uganda), Speak Up London (Honduras), West London Language School (Mali) and International House London (Kuwait). Somewhat surprisingly only one other IH affiliate, Bristol (partnering with Ecuador) is taking part this year.
But most striking is the number of Scottish Centres taking part – just one Edinburgh College (Nigeria), also only one of only two state FE colleges the other being Hilderstone College in Kent (Zambia).
Of the declining number of accredited Universities only two Sheffield (Turkey) and Nottingham Trent (Vietnam) are in this year’s scheme as two ESP specialists: Professional Language Solutions (Argentina) and York Associates (Peru).
Scotland is represented by one Edinburgh school part of the CES chain which is partnered with Brazil. Other chains taking part are Bell Educational Services (Lithuania), Oxford International (Cameroon) Stafford House (Cote D’ivoire) and St Giles (Angola).
The remaining five, all nonchain schools, are scattered across England: In the Home Counties there are two Eurospeak Language Schools (Bolivia) with Lewis School of English (Thailand) on the South Coast. In the West Country we have Inlingua Cheltenham (North Macedonia) while Norwich Study Centre (Guinea) representing the East of England and LILA* Liverpool (Cuba) flies the flag for the North.
