“Schools really are impressed with the British Council Core Skills programme. For the first time there is such an effective training programme at our school”. The British Council’s Core Skills programme aims to empower schools to make informed decisions about how they can best provide their learners with access to intrinsic and integrated skills, so that young people graduate school with the resources they need for a successful and prosperous future.
At the British Council, we believe that young people need and deserve the opportunity to grow into well-rounded, creative and critical citizens, ready to confidently build productive relationship, engage in modern labour markets and shape the future for themselves and future generations. With our work in schools, we have brought together international thinking and best practice related to 21st century deep learning skills for students in order to develop our Core Skills programme, a truly innovative approach to school education. This meaningful programme aims to empower teachers and school leaders to make informed decisions about how they can best provide their students with opportunities to develop their creative and critical capabilities within the mainstream classroom, so that young people can find success and prosperity through active participation in the global community.
Globally the British Council Core Skills programme has reached 9,000 schools and 26,837 teachers, and a further 11,259 school leaders have been trained. In Vietnam specifically, 91 schools, 329 teachers, 82 school leaders, and policy makers have benefited from the initiative.
In reference to the programme, Ms Hoang Kim Uyen, Vice Rector, Giang Vo Secondary School shared this positive response: “Giang Vo secondary school teachers are particularly impressed with the British Council core skills training on critical thinking and problem solving and communication and collaboration. For the first time, there is such an effective teacher training programme offered at our school. The training is not just about providing us with really useful content; teachers also have the opportunity to the share advantages and discuss different approaches to integrating core skills across different subjects. This is the most successful training course ever held at Giang Vo Secondary School”.
Le Hong Phong Secondary School further reported that after engaging in the programme, the school has reviewed objectives, content and methodology in respect to classroom practice and the evaluation of learning to better link school education to the real life. Teachers are encouraged to be innovative, planning lessons and employing teaching techniques that are appropriate to students’ learning needs. As a result of the changes, students have demonstrated increasingly positive attitudes towards learning including being more interested in the subject; paying attention throughout lessons; voluntarily participating in lessons, engaging with discussion tasks, actively pursuing project work beyond the classroom, reporting back on what has been learned, applying classroom learning to practical real world scenarios, and generally enjoying the opportunity to pursue a more creative learning process.
With all the success, we continue to deliver more trainings for teachers and school leaders in the next school year 2017.