Deputy Director, British Council, Saudi Arabia, Tony Calderbank outlines the multiple roles of the Council in the Kingdom, including their successful English-speaking programsA BRITISH institution that has attained a high profile in many countries today is the British Council. Tony Calderbank, the Deputy Director of the British Council in Saudi Arabia, is based in Riyadh, and on a recent visit to Jeddah gave me a thorough outline of its history and its current relationship with the Kingdom. “It just had its 75th Anniversary, It was started in 1934 and was originally known as ‘The British Committee for Relations with other Countries'. The first offices were opened in Egypt in 1938 followed by Portugal, Poland and Romania later that year. The aim was to promote abroad a wider appreciation of British culture and civilisation by encouraging cultural, educational and other interchanges between the UK and elsewhere. We now have offices in over 100 countries.” Calderbank has worked for the British Council for 10 years in Saudi Arabia, working in Jeddah, Al Khobar and now Riyadh. “One of the main focuses in our work is to try to create relationships between people in the UK and in the countries where we work,” he explained. “Our relationship with the Saudis is more geared to access to our education system and opportunities to discuss with experts in the UK areas of education reform – that is a major issue now in Saudi Arabia. Education reform is at the top of the Saudi Government's agenda and they are putting something like 27% of their national budget into education. It is for doing things as basic as building schools and fitting them out, because this is a massive country, and there are 33,000 schools and half of them have less than 100 kids, and a quarter of them have less than 50 kids – and some of them are in the nomad communities. So it is a challenge for the Saudis to deliver education to everybody and to staff these schools. It is exciting to be involved in this type of thing.” In his position as the Deputy Director, Calderbank operates with senior Saudis. He was in the UK recently with the Saudi Minister of Education, Prince Faisal bin Abdullah, and a large delegation from the Kingdom. They had been invited by the British Secretary of State for Education, and the Minister for Universities and Science, to attend the Education World Forum. This event is held every January in the UK and is attended by Ministers from around the world. “It is the largest gathering of Education Ministers that takes place on the annual circuit,” Calderbank remarked. “We have about 70 Education Ministers, plus Vice-Ministers, who come together to discuss issues pertinent to contemporary education.” The British Council operates on several levels in the Kingdom, and one of these is as an English teaching operation. “We have teaching centres in Al Khobar, Riyadh & Jeddah where Saudis and other members of the community can come and learn English. There are separate centres for men and women. There are currently several thousand Saudis studying across these centres, and we also have students from other parts of the Middle East, Turkey, European countries, Asia and Africa.” An English course at the British Council costs SR2,250. Generally, a course of 42 hours takes six weeks, which works out to three 2-hour lessons a week. There is a test at the end of each course and students receive a certificate at the end of each level. Calderbank described the teaching methodology: “We use communicative methodology to try to get people to use the language and speak it, and experience the language, rather than a traditional approach where you have got a teacher who speaks the students' native language and explains English through that. We use only English in the classroom. We try not to make it too academic; the focus is not just to pass exams or tests, but to get the students to want to use the language, and to want to learn it, inside the classroom and outside the classroom as well.” Tailor-made courses can also be arranged specifically for companies who might wish to train a number of their employees together. “The needs of the learners and the company requirements are assessed – for example, the staff might need to learn electronic communication; or requirements might be to do with report writing, or it might just be English for a general business context. It is like professional development, and these are corporate contracts.” In addition, the British Council helps to run different UK exams: “We do the IGCSEs, which are the school exams set from the UK. There are a number of international schools in Saudi who do these exams – they may be Cambridge or Oxford exams, so we help the schools run them. We also operate the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) which is an exam to get access to a British University, and in some cases to emigrate to Canada or some other country, or to work there. A large number for these exams will be taken by members of the expat community.” If there is sufficient demand, they will also run Teacher Training courses for the Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA). All teachers at the British Council must have this certificate, or similar. Some are full time employees of the British Council while others are locally employed on a part-time basis. Although in the past one could say that British education was the best in the world, Calderbank says that it is no longer as simple as that. “If I am thinking about a Saudi, he or she has all kinds of choices about places to go and study. They can study in the USA, or Canada, or Australia, or New Zealand. Nowadays they can study in South Korea, or China and learn Chinese and charter a completely different future for themselves. But still lots and lots of Saudis come to the UK. I think in the UK you are going to get an education that is well recognised, it is good quality, it encourages people to work independently, make their own decisions, and to think critically.” For further information, see The British Council website www.britishcouncil.org or google British Council Saudi Arabia.
