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By Libya Herald Reporters
Tripoli, 24 June 2014:
The British Council is suspending its English-teaching courses while it looks to replace expatriate teachers with . . .[restrict]Libyans.
The decision has been driven in the main by security considerations for its foreign staff, which it says has made their employment infeasible. However director Cherry Gough emphasised to the Libya Herald that the temporary halt to teaching from the end of this term would not affect the Council’s other work.
“All that will continue,” she said, “ including exams, especially IELTS (International English Language Testing System) and our work in higher educations, skills training, the arts and social development”. Gough added that the wider English programme, which includes the training of state school teachers and work with universities and vocational colleges, would also carry on.
“The change is an opportunity to take a fresh look at how we deliver our English courses so they can be available more widely in Libya” she said. “We know that there are large numbers of people in Tripoli who want to study English with us, and we don’t want to disappoint them. So we’re looking at how we’ll deliver our face-to-face model in the future.”
The options being examined, said Gough, included shorter, more intensive courses and a blend of online and face-to-face teaching. The British Council, she said, has already been providing an online course to more than 70,000 Moroccan university students. Similar instruction might be launched in Libya. [/restrict]
