British Council, Telangana ink MoU to shore up education ties

​Hyderabad: Alan Gemmell, OBE, Director British Council India and Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Principal Secretary, ITE &C and I&C Departments of Telangana signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the presence of Chief Secretary Shailendra Kumar Joshi and others to strengthen educational, cultural cooperation, and to support knowledge ambitions and economic growth of Telangana. 

The MoU aims to create opportunities for young people of Telangana to succeed in India and across the world by improving access to English language learning, quality education and internationally benchmarked assessments, skills and qualifications for young people and by creating initiatives that will promote the sharing of culture, creativity and ideas. The overarching MoU celebrates the British Council’s 70th anniversary in India and seeks to strengthen the relationship for the next 70 years.

The British Council seeks to collaborate with governments to improve English language learning. Towards this end, the British Council and government of Telangana have agreed to develop initiatives to improve skills and motivation of English language teachers in primary and secondary schools and teacher development institutions; and of trainers and trainees in the training institutes of the State government. The MoU also aims to help improve learner outcomes in English in the State.

The MoU seeks to develop skills of faculty and teachers from government universities and industrial training institutes across the State, expand the existing collaboration through initiatives like the Indo-British Fund, UK-India Education Research Initiative (UKIERI) and the Newton Bhabha programme. Together the Council and the government will build initiatives to improve English and employability skills of young people attending industrial training institutions, engineering and management courses in the State and also provide access to internationally benchmarked assessments to help recruitment and intra and international mobility of youth learning in these institutes.

British Council seeks to facilitate student mobility between universities and towards this end, it has offered scholarships to 47 women from Telangana to pursue higher students in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  Telangana scholars are Tejaswini Ganji, Hameed Amtul, Mounika Gurram and Faria Athar.

In the realm of arts and culture, the MoU seeks to develop collaborations at the British Council centre in Hyderabad which serves as a cultural hub for learners, entrepreneurs, and visitors from the UK. The Council and the government will work together to develop projects that promote innovative cultural exchange between Telangana and the UK.