Bangladesh Project background 1. Description of the partners New College Group consists of three schools – two in the North of England (Manchester and Liverpool) and one in Dublin. The PRELIM project was driven by the Manchester and Liverpool schools. The initial proposal to the British Council was co-written by the principals of the two schools, Kerill Kennedy and Peter Dean. The course content was developed by the group curriculum manager, Marc Biggam, and subsequently adapted by the teachers who were from both schools. The ETA, Bangladesh English Language Teachers Association (BELTA) was founded in 1984 with a stated aim “to develop and empower teachers at all levels (primary, secondary, tertiary, institutional) in order to facilitate effective communication within the English language teaching community and to improve the standards of learning and teaching English throughout the country.” The members of BELTA directly involved in the PRELIM project were the BELTA president Dr Rubina Khan, past president Harunur Rashid Khan, treasurer Dr Akhter Jahan and Dr Md. Zulfeqar Haider.
2. Key features of the context
Another differentiator of ability was between rural and urban areas, with teachers in urban areas having a much higher standard of English at both primary and secondary level. Access to and the cost of the internet was another important issue. While 4G was common in many urban areas, some rural areas only had access to 3G. In addition, many teachers were reliant on their mobile phones to access the internet due to the lack of broadband and Wi-Fi infrastructure. When considered in comparison to the income of teachers in Bangladesh, internet data was seen as an expensive commodity. Finally, the PRELIM project was launched in the middle of the COVID pandemic. The use of local lockdowns would have increased the relative cost of data while lockdowns and/or increases in unemployment would have increased the number of people in the family home when classes might be scheduled. This would make it potentially more difficult to find time or a quiet space to attend classes. The number of CPs was fewer than expected, and it is possible this was due to some extent to data costs. While there was, subsequently, the launch of the connectivity grant, this was not known at the initial stage of ‘recruiting’ CPs.
From our discussions with BELTA, it was clear that there were large differences between the level of English (and presumably confidence in use) of teachers at different levels of the education system. Secondary/high school teachers were regarded as having a far higher level of English than primary teachers. This was mostly due to the fact that in high schools English teachers were subject teachers, and this was reflected in how much they would have to teach English and, presumably, in the recruitment criteria for these jobs. At the primary (Elementary school in the parlance of the BELTA team) school level, however, the teachers were generalists, teaching all subjects of the curriculum to their class and thus their ability to teach across the subjects was more important.
Partnered Remote Language Improvement (PRELIM) project report
35
