Forging new relations with institutions

Project English aims to provide every teacher and learner with skills, ideas, and access to the best resources from the U.K., says Mr. Sellers.

The British Council has expanded its programmes in the country by implementing several educational and cultural projects over these years. Paul Sellers, the new Director of the British Council for operations in South India, says that the council is keen on building relationships with a variety of institutions and people in India through its ongoing and forthcoming initiatives. In an interview to The Hindu-EducationPlus in Kochi, Mr. Sellers, who had earlier held senior positions with the British Council worldwide, elaborates on a wide-range of topics related to the council. Excerpts from the interview:

How good is the demand for U.K. higher education among students in India? How do you plan to tap the growing opportunities in the Indian higher education sector?

The demand for U.K. higher education keeps increasing every year. We had a 16 per cent increase last year. There are around 15,000 Indian students going to the U.K. [every year] to study the undergraduate or postgraduate programmes offered by the universities in the country. That is the number of students on our record. It is probably more than that. Interestingly, Kerala accounts for around two-third of the number. It is the biggest among the States. The largest number of students come from Kerala. We attribute this to the good school education and literacy.

Possibly the demand for courses in certain subject areas isnot met even though there are very good higher educational institutions in South India especially in health care and engineering.

And IT is also coming up. British Council institutions around the world have always had a mission to promote the U.K. as a higher educational destination.

Increasingly, we want to build sort of mutual links between U.K. universities and India. We make it easy for the U.K. universities to come and present themselves before Indian students by holding U.K. education exhibitions. We also work closely with the British High Commission so that they can give information on visa requirements, which is an important issue. We are conscious of the competition from Australia, South East Asia, and Europe. The U.K.'s niche is often the postgraduate programmes that complement the undergraduate programmes students pursue here especially in niche subject areas.

One of the ways forward is to link educational institutions in India and the U.K. so that students have a real choice where to study and from where they get quality education.

Do you think that the move by the Indian government to allow foreign universities to open shop here would pave way for the entry of higher education providers in the U.K. to India?

I think definitely there is an opportunity. The new legislation is a positive step forward. I see the U.K. institutions going for joint ventures in India. Some would set up their own campus. But I understand it requires a lot of investment. Some universities thrive on that — Middlesex, Nottingham and some others. They already have campuses in China and the United Arab Emirates running successfully. The reputation of universities is very often based on its locality or presence. The best option, the low-risk model, is to have joint programmes and exchange of faculty and students. And again here British Council intends to help by maintaining the contact with the Indian universities. We can put them together when institutes in the U.K. want to go for joint collaboration.

Do you think that the visa restrictions imposed by the U.K. government would impact genuine applications for higher education?

No, definitely not. There is no barrier at all in terms of the standard students who want to pursue a programme in the U.K. on a bonafide basis especially in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. What the U.K. government has done is to tie-up some of the loose ends in the legislation. It is a fact that some students heading to the U.K. for short-term programmes like language courses are not necessarily going for that sole purpose. We encourage students to come. The student with the right qualification is offered a place in the U.K. in the right institution.

What is your advice to students who are searching for data on the higher educational opportunities in the U.K.? How would they be able to identify fake agents and agencies?

They should go through the British Council web site (www.britishcouncil.org). We have a database of all the universities in the U.K. And this list is vetted and guaranteed by the British Council. It also gives a breakdown of the courses and subjects specialised by each university.

If you are lucky enough to be in a place where you have access to one of our U.K. education exhibition, you can talk directly to the representatives of the universities.

I think the vast majority of agents do a really good job, as they assist the students in finding their right course.

If their advice and data match the initial research you have done on the basis of the British Council web site, it is more likely that they can help you. Do not pay fees upfront without a written guarantee and a contract or paper work. I believe nearly a dozen agents based in Kochi have passed the British Council training for agents.

We offer them a special training. Another thing to do is to check whether they are accredited by the council. It is not mandatory. But it is yet another guarantee.

Could you elaborate on the ongoing ‘Learn English' project initiated by the council?

Project English, a regional initiative on English language teaching (ELT) and training, was launched in November 2007 with the commitment to provide every teacher and learner with skills, ideas, and access to the best resources from the U.K.

A target of indirectly training 7.5 lakh teachers in India from 2007-12 has been set. We have currently reached 74 per cent of the target. Since November 2007, we have trained 4,266 master trainers, 5,56,166 teachers and 28 million students through this initiative.

We are in the middle of a very productive contract with the Kerala government to train teachers of English in the public sector.

The methodology is to train a cadre of master trainers. In the past 18 months, we have trained 300 master trainers. They have trained over 6,000 teacher trainers. These trainers have taught two lakh students in Kerala so far.

We do have similar agreements with nine State governments including Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Our aim is to get as close as to the end user — the student.

The council keeps a quality control over the programme. Considering the huge demand in India, our ambition is to become more high-tech with learning of English. We are now researching and investing in English through mobile phone technology and online programmes. Picking the right technology is the key.

One technology might be right for Europe but may not be right for India. Mobile phone market in India had outstretched. Our Internet provision is very good. It will help in increasing your capabilities in learning English. There is a whole range of free materials on the council's web site on learning English.

The focus is still on the teacher. There are very good teacher support materials on the web site.

We already have the Cambridge teacher training course. And we are looking for ways to transmit a similar course through television.

source:http://www.hindu.com/edu/2011/03/08/stories/2011030850030100.htm

21st Century Tools for Iraqi School Children: UNESCO Launches Distance Learning

Satellite TV and an online educational resource are two new tools supporting education in Iraq. UNESCO, with the support of the European Union and in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, announced the formal opening of The Iraqi educational Television (Iraqi Edu at Nile Sat) and The Iraqi Curricula Website (www.iraqicurricula.org) at a ceremony in Baghdad on Wednesday the 23rd of February, 2011.

“What make our present era remarkable are the number, variety and importance of means of communication and information in presenting information and ideas, in such easiness and high speed, in addition to the elements of suspense it carries in order to break the routine and benefit from previous experiences that contributed to the process development of the transfer of audiovisuals to the recipient” Minister of Education Dr. Mohammad Ali Tamim said in his speech.
 

Within The Educational TV programming, UNESCO established two TV production / broadcasting studios with a satellite transmission unit, produced 624 TV lessons, provided a total of 725 hours of externally produced TV programs for Iraqi students and produced 24 episodes of Abu Salam Family, an animated series of 24 episodes focusing attention on civic values, gender equality and human rights. In addition, UNESCO established a TV library and trained all the TV station staff each in his own specialty.

The Iraqi Curricula Website is an online resource with links to all relevant educational materials covering learning from primary to secondary schooling. Among the features of the website are resources for literacy, accelerated learning for students who have missed school and need to catch-up, along with teacher guidebooks and all of the Educational TV programs, including The Abu Salam Family series.

“Combined, the website and Educational TV, give school age children, no matter where they are in the world, an opportunity to learn. This is a commitment to learning for the children of Iraq and an investment in Iraq’s future,” said Mohamad Djelid, director of the UNESCO Iraq Office.

Since 2003, Iraq has struggled to resuscitate the education sector after years of neglect. “This commitment to education is about making a down payment on tomorrow,” said Mr. Jerzy Skuratowicz, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations, adding, “the progression is simple: education leads to opportunity, opportunity leads to progress, and progress leads to a brighter future for Iraq and the region.”
 

UNESCO, along with UNICEF, UN-Habitat, The World Bank and our Iraqi counterparts, has worked tirelessly to restore the reputation of the educational system that was once the most respected in the Arab world. These two resources immediately address the needs of students who have been unable to regularly attend class due to war or insecurity. The satellite TV programs have a regional footprint and by the nature of the internet, all Iraqis no matter where they live can access educational material and programs from a computer.
 

“The new educational TV will make the official curriculum available to everybody who has access to television. And here we are talking about almost 90 % of the population in Iraq and even more in the Diaspora.” Said Mr. Jobst von Kirchmann, EU - Head of Cooperation.
 

Source:

http://www.unesco.org/en/iraq-office/dynamic-content-single-view/news/21st_century_tools_for_iraqi_school_children_unesco_launches_distance_learning/back/9623/cHash/b0cdb12149/

Google to content farms: It's war

Google has set in motion the changes that it announced recently to combat "content farms"--companies that produce large amounts of inexpensive, search-engine-optimized content that have been frequently decried for their low quality.

But will there be sweeping changes in the way we view and navigate the Web? It's hard to tell just yet.

"In the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking--a change that noticeably impacts 11.8 percent of our queries--and we wanted to let people know what's going on," Google said in a blog post last week. "This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites--sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites--sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."

Part of this strategy involves a Chrome browser extension called Personal Blocklist.

But Demand Media, the recent IPO at the forefront of the "content farm" controversy, said last week that it's been unaffected by Google's algorithm change, so far. "It's impossible to speculate how these or any changes made by Google impact any online business in the long term--but at this point in time, we haven't seen a material net impact on our Content and Media business," Demand Media executive vice president Larry Fitzgibbons said last night in a blog post. Demand Media, nevertheless, leaves open the possibility that its content could be affected in the future.

Indeed, Google said the changes may not be visible immediately, especially as the modifications to its algorithm are currently affecting only U.S. users. "We're very excited about this new ranking improvement because we believe it's a big step in the right direction of helping people find ever higher quality in our results," the Google blog post explained. "We've been tackling these issues for more than a year, and working on this specific change for the past few months. And we're working on many more updates that we believe will substantially improve the quality of the pages in our results."

What's at stake for Google here is the fact that critics have said content farms are making search results less useful and less relevant. With pressure from the "social search" trend fueled by Facebook's success and from search rival Bing inching up in market share, this decision may be more pressing for Google than it appears at first glance.

Soource: http://www.zdnetasia.com/google-to-content-farms-it-s-war-62207115.htm

Central African Republic: Teachers provide education despite on-going violence

EI supports teachers in the Central African Republic who struggle to bring quality education to their students despite decades of political violence.

The all Africa website has reported that due to widespread destruction and displacement, the educational sector has been badly affected by a dire shortage of teachers and adequate physical infrastructure. For thousands of children, classes take place not in solid buildings of brick, but in rudimentary “bush schools.”

UNICEF's chief education officer in the country, Farid Boubekeur, told the humanitarian news and analysis service from the UN Office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs that “needs are huge and funds insufficient. More appropriate infrastructure as well as qualified teachers are needed. Because of difficulties in the conflict-affected areas of the North, disparities in terms of access and quality are deepening.”

Many of the pupils attending schools in the northeast of the country were forced to flee their homes due to the conflict between rebel groups and government forces, and are now living in informal settlements in and around the village. According to UNICEF, there are more than 5,000 children of primary-school age and a total of 19 schools in the M'Brès Sub-Prefecture, 10 built of semi-perishable materials. Among the 76 teachers, 40 are pupils' parents, without any sort of qualification.

In line with country statistics showing an average of one teacher for about 94 students, the Ecole Ouande in the Linguiri village has two teachers, both contracted by the government, and one trainee. Unlike the two teachers earning a wage of 60,000 CFA (US$120), the trainee works for free, but is supported by parents who voluntarily contribute with 100 CFA each (50 cents).

Aid agencies have helped to build some 800 schools in the northwest, two-thirds of them “bush schools,” and have given basic teacher training to some 2,000 parents.

EI urges the national authorities to guarantee the employment of properly trained and qualified teachers; to stop resorting to unpaid trainees; and to provide decent teaching and learning conditions by building education infrastructures and paying adequate wages to teachers.

source:http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/show.php?id=1528&theme=healthandsafety&country=car