Hungary: In the kind of news that, to use a Turkish phrase, makes you want to eat your head, support for bilingual education in Hungary will be discontinued next year under the current draft budget, despite schools saying this would pull the rug from under students,
A recent Daily Nepszabadsag aticle noted that the head [...]
Middle East & United Kingdom: Aspiring creative writers in the Middle East are being given the opportunity to make their first break into the English language publishing industry (the poor Buggers don’t know what they’re getting in to) through a new award: the British Council’s ‘prestigious’ ELTons Awards.
The ELTons, inconceivably now in their eighth [...]
South Korea & the Philippines: ‘They come in their thousands every month, eager to learn what is considered as the language of some 1.8 billion people worldwide,’ exclaims the Korea Times with no small degree of hyperbole.
For South Korean students, the Philippines has now become something of a haven as far as learning the English [...]
This wouldn’t exactly be newsworthy in most cases but given that it’s taking place in the Hell on Earth known commonly as Saudi Arabia I guess it’s worth mentioning. The Arab News is to sponsor* four of 15 women students taking a Ramadan-long English course organised by the ever lovely British Council in Jeddah. The [...]
Moscow’s City Duma has suggested an amendment to a new law that would require all teachers to apply for work permits… in addition to the work visas which currently allow them to teach here. Also, according to the amendment’s author, Tatyana Potyayeva, the deputy head of the City Duma’s Science and Education committee, the move [...]
United Kingdom: The jobs of up to 80 staff at Hounslow Language Service are under threat after councillors agreed they should withdraw almost 20% of its funding.
YourLocalGuardian notes that the service – which provides specialist support for over 7,000 schoolchildren from ethnic minorities in developing their English – has 105 teaching and management staff, of [...]
The Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, has called on educators to give their 100 per cent support to the changes to the national education policy, particularly the decision to revert the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English to the Malay language from 2012.
“I expect a 100 per cent support from educators, without [...]
Pupils at 25 infant and primary schools throughout Murcia will be offered the chance of bilingual education in the next academic year under a programme which will offer a third of the schools’ classes in English, notes the Typically Spanish website.
This regional government programme will benefit more than one thousand children, and begins, in a [...]
According to the Times of India, as part of its global vision for English, the British Council has launched the programme ‘Project English’ in India and Sri Lanka. The aim is that by 2010 every teacher and learner of English in the world will have access to skills, ideas and materials they need from the [...]
The Ottowa Citizen notes that when Awo Farah arrived in Canada from Djibouti in 2001 to seek a better education, the nine-year-old Grade 5 student couldn’t speak English. Eight years later, it’s amazing how her life has developed … all for the positive.
Farah would substitute the word “crazy” for “amazing” to describe her early months [...]
ELT World
