The Professional Up-skilling of English Language Teachers (Pro-ELT) is a British Council Project, funded by the Malaysian Ministry of Education, which aims to strengthen English teaching and learning in Primary and Secondary Schools across Malaysia.
WHY DOES MALAYSIAN MINISTRY OF EDUCATION PARTNER WITH US?
Our global impact
The British Council has a long history of working with the Malaysian Government, and was able to bring over 60 years of experience delivering excellence and leadership in the field of English language teaching worldwide to working with Malaysian primary teachers.
Between 2011 to 2012 the British Council taught 294,000 learners who received 1.3 million classroom hours. In terms of our global impact this makes the British Council the leading provider of English training.
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
Students in Malaysia face tremendous challenges in attaining English proficiency, and this is reflected in both national assessments and international English examinations.
One of the priorities for the Ministry of Education is to implement initiatives to help develop the language and teaching skills of English language teachers across Malaysia. The Pro-ELT project targets fourteen thousand teachers across all the 14 states of Malaysia.
The rationale for Pro – ELT is based on two main beliefs:
- Quality of teachers is the single most important determinant of student outcomes
- English proficiency is a prerequisite to good teaching of the language
The Pro-ELT project has been hugely successful. Learn more about the Pro-ELT project below.
- Primary Objective: To raise the level of language proficiency of Malaysian primary and secondary school teachers from B1 to B2 or B2 to C1 on the CEFR proficiency scale.
- Secondary Objective: To support the development of classroom methodology.
The aim is to strengthen English teaching and learning through a blended training approach that includes: quality face to face delivery, supported distance learning and integrated proficiency and methodology training. Aptis is being used as the pre and post-test for the training project.
Aptis is an English proficiency test which discriminates between A1 and C2 on the CEFR scale. It is designed as an English test for adults, which can be used to assess language ability in all four English skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing).Teachers will be tested at the beginning as well as at the end of the Programme so that improvement can be identified and measured.
Course content and mode of delivery
The course material is tailor-made to the context of Malaysian primary and secondary school English language teachers where the focus is language learning within the context of language teaching. The year-long training is delivered in a blended mode of face-to-face quality learning provided by qualified teacher trainers and an equal number of online hours facilitated by certified e-moderators.
In order to accommodate the context of different teachers, the pro-ELT training adopts a flexible approach to scheduling. Most teachers attend weekly six-hour sessions in their locality throughout the year while others, who are located in more remote areas, are brought together in specific locations in their state to do the same amount of training in intensive four-week courses.
The British Council and the Ministry of Education work hand in hand to ensure that Pro-ELT maintains high standards and meets its objectives. Apart from internal British Council and MoE continuous project assessment, external international consultants has also developed a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework to ensure the quality and success of Pro-ELT.