An article describing support given by the British Council for ELT in Africa.

1. 75 YEARS OF BRITISH COUNCIL SUPPORT FOR
ENGLISH TEACHING IN AFRICA
PAUL WOODS, ENGLISH MANAGER SUB-SAHARAN
AFRICA, BRITISH COUNCIL
The Early Years
British Council, originally called ‘The British Committee for Relations
with Other Countries’ was established in 1934 as a bulwark against
fascism. In the mid-30’s, Germany and Italy were becoming increasingly
militaristic and aggressive. Britain, on the other hand, felt that the
development of cultural relations would strengthen its influence abroad.
The British Council Charter defined its purpose as ‘promoting abroad a
wider appreciation of British culture and civilisation [by] encouraging
cultural, educational and other interchanges between the United Kingdom
and elsewhere.’
In its early years , British Council arranged for lecturers and books to
be sent overseas, as well as arranging visits to the UK. At first, funds were
very tight – unlike its French, German, and Italian counterparts, which had
budgets stretching into the millions, British Council managed with a few
thousand pounds. Offices were opened in Egypt, then in 1943 in Ghana
and Nigeria. After World War II ended, many barriers to cultural relations
work came down and partnership opportunities increased. British Council
expanded to include new offices in Kenya and Sudan.. In Egypt, the
Council ran English language classes and sponsored performances of
Shakespeare’s plays. ( Fisher, 2009)
The 60’s-English language teaching becomes core
Around 1960 language teaching, in association with the BBC, became
a core element of British Council’s work. The two organisations also
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2. British Council’s office in Liverpool, 1941
began to explore the potential of using television for language teaching. A
series of 39 TV programmes for teaching English was produced for non-
Anglophone African countries including Algeria, Congo, Gabon, Cote
D’Ivoire and Morocco. A new Department for Technical Cooperation was
set up in 1961, responsible for British aid to developing countries. From
the ‘60s until the mid ‘90s, British Council became responsible for
education programmes and student training schemes in developing
countries. During this period many students from Africa studied for MAs
in Applied Linguistics, funded by the UK government.
When Rhodesia declared UDI in 1965 British Council withdrew its
representative and several countries in southern Africa broke off
diplomatic relations with Britain. However, British Council stressed
reciprocity and partnerships, and newly independent nations increasingly
requested support for English language teaching. (Fisher, 2009)
The 70’s–Partnerships and Direct Teaching
Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) was founded in the early 60s.
British Council was invited to act as the overseas arm of VSO and looked
after the welfare of over 1,000 volunteers, many of them teachers of
English. In 1971, when I was a volunteer teacher of English in Nigeria,
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3. there were nearly 200 VSOs teaching English and related subjects in
secondary schools and teachers’ colleges across the country. Although
VSO went on to set up its own Field Offices, British Council has
maintained strong ties: Sir David Green, the Director-General between
1999–2007, was previously Director of VSO, and collaboration with VSO
continues through the Global Xchange partnership, supporting the
development of “active global citizens”. (Fisher, 2009)
In the early 70s, British Council provided support for the ACE (Aid to
Commonwealth English) scheme, under which British ELT experts were
sent to work in universities and teacher training colleges in
Commonwealth countries, including Kenya and Uganda.
British books for children displayed in the British Council office in Rabat,
Morocco, 1979
During the mid-70s the idea that newly rich countries should pay for
their own technical aid and language teaching gained support. British
Council Teaching Centres were set up, which had to make a “surplus”, or
at the very least cover their costs. There was a feeling that this approach
would not work in Africa, so the new centres were at first confined to
Egypt and a few other countries in North Africa. Today there are teaching
centres in Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Eritrea, Kenya, Libya, Mauritius,
Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal and Tanzania.
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4. The 80’s-the Key English Language Teaching (KELT) Scheme
and Communicative language teaching
From 1977 onwards, British Council developed a partnership with the
UK government through the Overseas Development Administration
(ODA)-now Department for International Development (DFID). This
partnership supported programmes which included the Key English
Language Teaching (KELT) scheme. This coincided with the development
of a “projectised” approach to overseas aid, with detailed project plans,
logical frameworks and objectively verifiable indicators of achievement.
When the UK withdrew its support for UNESCO in the mid- 80s, the GBP
6 million pounds saved was redeployed to set up projects in Francophone
African countries, including Guinea and Senegal. By the mid-80s there
were KELT projects in many African countries, including Angola, Egypt,
Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, and
Zambia, with about 350 “experts” funded by DFID and managed by
British Council worldwide. These projects covered a very wide range of
activities - curriculum and syllabus design, materials production,
communication skills, teacher training for primary and secondary schools
and many other areas. Over the course of one and a half decades, annual
“Dunford House” seminars were held which attracted UK experts and
local counterparts, on themes such as “Appropriate Methodology” and
“National Curricula”.
British Council also actively promoted new methods of teaching. In
partnership with the BBC and ODA, the Council produced a series of
teacher training films, “Teaching Observed”, (Hobbs, 1977) which was
widely used in English language teacher training programmes across
Africa.
The idea that language should be taught communicatively began to
gain widespread acceptance. This gained impetus after Henry Widdowson
published “Teaching Language as Communication” (Widdowson, 1978),
emphasising the importance of language use, rather than usage. My
favourite example of usage, not use, is when I met a small child coming
down the road in Tukuyu, in southern Tanzania. “Hello, how are you?”
she said. “Fine thank you,” I replied. “What is your name?” she asked. I
told her, then she said, “Give me my pen!” “But I haven’t got your pen…”
So much for drilling in structures and sentence patterns, with no attention
to the appropriate use of language in a communicative context! A British
Council officer, John Munby, published “Communicative Syllabus
Design” in 1981. He retired from the British Council in 1997; the book
was used as the basis for designing communicative syllabuses for English
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5. and especially ESP courses in many African countries, and is still in print.
(Munby, 1981).
During the 70s and 80s, British Council worked to break down barriers
to understanding and opportunity, notably in apartheid South Africa. It
continued with programmes of assistance to non-violent, anti-apartheid
organisations and supported English language programmes for the non-white
community. This included the Molteno Project, to improve language
education in black primary schools. Molteno promoted the development of
an alternative curriculum, and introduced radical new ways of teaching
young children to read. British Council also supported the UN Institute for
Namibia, based in Lusaka, which looked forward to the day when Namibia
would gain its independence from South Africa.
The 90s-the death of aid for UK-funded ELT
In the early 90’s, a new Minister, Clare Short, took over the
Department for International Development in the UK. This was a disaster
for aid-funded English Language teaching. Ms Short did not think English
Language contributed to development, and proceeded to axe EL projects
funded by DFID. In a last ditch attempt to influence opinion, the Institute
for English Language Education, along with UK academics and EL
professionals, organised the LAP 2000 Conference in Lancaster in 1994 to
emphasise the economic and developmental arguments for ELT as an
agent of change and development. (Hutchinson and Waters, 1994) But
dogma prevailed, and virtually no DFID-funded ELT projects continued
after 2001. One of the last to be completed was the Secondary and
Technical English Project in Mozambique. The publication of Robert
Phillipson’s book,” Linguistic Imperialism”, (Phillipson, 1992) a biassed
and one-sided attack on the spread of English as a global language, also
contributed to a lack of political will on behalf of the UK government to
support large scale English language projects. Wherever possible, the
Council continued to bid to design and implement major donor- or
national government-funded projects in ELT. One of these was the 5-year
ELIP (English Language Improvement Project) in Ethiopia, which was
completed last year.
The 21st Century-Peacekeeping English
From the mid-90’s the Peacekeeping English project was established .
This focussed initially on countries in Central and Eastern Europe which
aspired to join NATO, following the collapse of communism in the USSR
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6. and its former satellites. From 2003 onwards, the focus shifted to conflict
and post-conflict situations, including Africa. New projects were set up
supporting ‘interoperability’, to enable multinational forces from NATO,
the African Union and UN peacekeepers to communicate effectively with
each other in international peace support operations. (Woods, 2006).
In this way the provision of language training was directly contributing
to the development of a safer and more peaceful world. Projects in
Mozambique and Angola have just been completed, and new projects have
been established in Ethiopia, DRC and Libya. In May 2009 I visited
Sudan, to scope a project to teach English to Joint Integrated Units,
composed of SAF and SPLA soldiers who were previous fighting on
opposite sides.
Global English
In 2008, British Council decided to move away from funding low
impact local projects in favour of larger scale regional and global
products. For English. Initially 12 new products were developed, 6 for
learners and 6 for teachers.
The Learner Products were: LearnEnglish Newspapers & Magazines;
LearnEnglish Family; LearnEnglish Audio; Premier Skills; LearnEnglish
Second Life for Teens and LearnEnglish Mobile, while the Six teacher
products included: Global Path; Global Home for Teachers; Language
Improvement for English Teachers; Learning Technologies for Teachers;
Teachers Knowledge Test course and a Teacher Training Videos course.
Centrally, British Council is currently developing a global English
Product portfolio, with three strands targeting key officials and
influencers, teachers and learners:
English Nexus Network building & events
Expertise, research and knowledge management
Policy maker outreach
Engaging Teachers Teacher training
Online courses to reach wider Teacher
audiences
Teacher development by radio
Global CPD framework
Communities of Practice
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7. English Connect Online courses to reach wider student audiences
Using radio to reach wider audiences
Teaching Centres
UK Exams
The key elements in “Nexus” are strengthening our role as a world
authority in English teaching, building networks and providing content.
Engaging Teachers focuses on training, networking and resources for
teaching. We are currently developing a series of radio programmes for
teachers of English in poorly resourced circumstances in Africa.
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8. For Learners, we are strengthening our professional development offer
and planning to open new teaching centres in partnership with local
organisations in Africa. We are also developing a series of radio
programmes, “Shared World”, for learners with low levels of English
combining language learning with developmental themes.
This completes our “Cook’s tour” of British Council support for ELT
in Africa over the past 75 years. It is difficult to gaze into a crystal ball
and guess what the next 75 will bring. Perhaps Chinese will take over as
the language of global international communication. Perhaps English will
consolidate its position in Africa at the expense of other ex-colonial
languages such as Portuguese and French. Or maybe we will see a shift in
language policy leading to much wider use of regional lingua franca, such
as Kiswahili and Yoruba.
In the short term British Council faces the challenge of offsetting a
declining government grant by doubling its income from English teaching
and professional development courses and extending its impact and reach
through new media including digital technologies, the web/social
networking sites and mobile phones, as well as more traditional means
such as radio and TV, as it continues to support the role of English in
Africa as a tool for both personal and national/socio-economic
development.
References
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9. D. Allwright and A.Waters, 1994 Language in Aid projects: Towards the Year
2000 Colloquium Proceedings. Lancaster: Institute for English Language
Education.
British Council website: www.britishcouncil.org/history-1940-royal-charter.htm
A. Fisher, 2009 A Story of Engagement: the British Council 1934-2009 London,
British Council.
J Hobbs, 1977. Teaching Observed. London: BBC
J Munby,, 1981 Communicative Syllabus Design, Cambridge, CUP
R. Phillipson, 1992. Linguistic Imperialism Oxford: OUP
M. Rose & N. Wadham-Smith, 2004 Mutuality, Trust and Cultural Relations,
London, The British Council..
A.J.S. White, 1965. The British Council: The First 25 Years 1934–1959, London,
1965
H.G. Widdowson, 1978 Teaching Language as Communication Oxford, OUP.
R.P. H Woods, 2006 The Hedgehog and the Fox: Two Approaches to theTeaching
of English to the Military, in Re-locating TESOL in an Age of Empire, London,
Palgrave Macmillan.
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10. D. Allwright and A.Waters, 1994 Language in Aid projects: Towards the Year
2000 Colloquium Proceedings. Lancaster: Institute for English Language
Education.
British Council website: www.britishcouncil.org/history-1940-royal-charter.htm
A. Fisher, 2009 A Story of Engagement: the British Council 1934-2009 London,
British Council.
J Hobbs, 1977. Teaching Observed. London: BBC
J Munby,, 1981 Communicative Syllabus Design, Cambridge, CUP
R. Phillipson, 1992. Linguistic Imperialism Oxford: OUP
M. Rose & N. Wadham-Smith, 2004 Mutuality, Trust and Cultural Relations,
London, The British Council..
A.J.S. White, 1965. The British Council: The First 25 Years 1934–1959, London,
1965
H.G. Widdowson, 1978 Teaching Language as Communication Oxford, OUP.
R.P. H Woods, 2006 The Hedgehog and the Fox: Two Approaches to theTeaching
of English to the Military, in Re-locating TESOL in an Age of Empire, London,
Palgrave Macmillan.
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