Page 20 - ELG2301 Jan Issue 483

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT .

The Master’s listings

Your guide to understanding how to read them, as explained by our editor-in-chief,
Melanie Butler

he EL Gazette UK Master’s listing There are other sources we could have used. has received a judgement that the research was
is, as its name implies, a list, not a For example, only 34 universities choose to of international standard or world class overall,
ranking. We do not claim to know be accredited for English language teaching we have put the name of the subject area in red
T whether a certain Scottish university by the British Council and not all of those in the REF column on the grid.
is objectively better than another in Wales offer Master’s. A further 23 are accredited by
or Yorkshire, but we aim to give you enough BALEAP, which focuses in on the teaching The TEF
objective third-party information to help you of academic English. Just two universities are This ranks the overall teaching in all English
decide which university may be better for you. accredited by both. universities as bronze where it is satisfactory,
In this year’s edition, as well as providing In our listing, we only include the British silver where it is good and gold where it is
a list of institutions and courses which is as Council accredited institutions because they excellent. These results are shown in the
comprehensive as we can make it, we are publish full inspection reports, enabling us to column by coloured stars. Many universities
showing the comparative results from three provide comparative information. BALEAP, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do
official sources which may help would-be though more clearly focused on the English not take part in this scheme.
students choose the course for them. needed for university, does not, unfortunately
These three sources look at different aspects provide such data. BC
of an institution’s provision: the Teaching Here are the relevant details for each of This is marked ‘Yes’ where the university is
Excellence Framework (TEF) tells us how these schemes. accredited. Universities which rank in the
good, comparatively, a university is at teaching; top 20% of language centres in the country
the British Council (BC) accreditation The REF based on their inspection reports are marked
scheme tells us how good that university is at The REF evaluates research from specific as Centres of Excellence.
teaching English; and the Research Excellence university departments under a number of The EL Gazette tries to make its Master’s
Framework (REF) tells us how good the headings. Most ELT-related research comes listing as comprehensive as we can. If we have
specific department which runs this Master’s under three of those headings: education, inadvertently missed out a university or a
course is at research in areas related to English English language and linguistics. Where the relevant Master’s course, let us know and we
language teaching. university department offering a specific Master’s will add it to future rankings.

PHOTOGRAPH WIKIMEDIA

The University of Birmingham’s Aston Webb building
20 January 2023