BC 11: Letter to the Chair of the Committee from Martin Davidson CMG, Chief Executive, British Council

Thank you for your letter of 15 March 2010. I am delighted that you and your colleagues were able to meet our Director Palestinian Territories and that you take such an interest in what we are trying to achieve in often very challenging circumstances.

We categorically do not operate a policy whereby English Language teaching is only offered to countries where it is financially viable for us to do so but base our decisions on where to teach on a number of different factors. As you heard during your visit, there is a very strong demand amongst Palestinians for face to face English teaching and this is a demand we are keen to meet. Indeed, we ran teaching centres in East Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and Gaza at varying times from 1988 to 2000 in addition to off-site contract work for organisations such as UNRWA,

Between 1998 and 2000 we took the difficult decision to close these centres because of the deteriorating security situation. Ten years on the situation remains difficult and tense and running teaching centres, particularly in Gaza remains impossible due to security concerns.

Following the closure of our teaching centres, in 2000 we have been actively pursuing alternative ways of meeting the demand for English and have worked with partners such as UNRWA, state institutions and other organisations involved in English. Since 2007 we have trained 156 English language teacher trainers from schools and universities in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and supported them professionally with materials. They in turn have trained approximately 4,000 English language teachers and trainee teachers reaching around 200,000 learners through face to face teaching.

From April this year we will have a full time trainer based in Ramallah to expand our work in the West Bank and Gaza. Alongside this we are supporting learners through online access, CDs, radio and television (in collaboration with the BBC) media with accompanying study materials and podcasts. As part of a £1.5m project spanning 17 countries in the region, we are also producing self-access courses which will be available in these formats.

We will continue to review the security situation in Palestinian Territories and we are keen to explore new ways to meet the strong demand for face to face English language learning. We are currently investigating the possibility of a different kind of teaching model that uses partner premises, such as universities, to deliver teaching through trained local teachers.

24 March 2010