The British Council Vietnam has been working closely with the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) to improve the standard of English language teaching and learning in state schools throughout the country. From 2009 to September 2014, 189 teachers and trainers were trained by the British Council to become primary trainers.
Programme aims
Primary Innovations, which has been delivered in nine countries across East Asia, is a training programme designed to support cadres of local trainers to improve their skills in training teachers, using child friendly approaches, classroom management, lesson planning and course design. The idea behind this is to build capacity amongst local trainers and to improve reach through using a ‘cascade’ type model.
Programme participants
Unlike regular teacher training, this is a ‘trainer training’ program whereby cadres of local trainers (a mix of University lecturers and primary teachers) are trained up to become teacher trainers themselves by British Council master trainers. They are:
- Primary education lectures from 22 universities and colleges of foreign languages.
- Primary English specialist from departments of education and training
- Primary English language teachers selected from 17 provinces throughout country.
Some trainers comes from provinces as far apart as Son La, Thai Nguyen in the North, Tay Nguyen, Dak Lak in the Middle and Can Tho, Dong Thap in the South.
Programme content:
The program consists of 240 hours, divided into four phases. There are two separate weeks in each stage. At the end of each phase, after the input sessions, the trainers will deliver two day teacher training workshops for local primary teachers.
Programme Outcomes:
189 PToTs
- Completed 240 hours of input on young learner methodology, developing training skills and workshop planning
- Delivered five supervised teacher training workshop to local primary teachers
- Demonstrated a practical working knowledge of young learner methodology in the context of teacher primary learners in Vietnam
- Demonstrated the ability to plan and develop appropriate materials for workshop sessions
- Demonstrated the ability to manage workshops effectively and to provide appropriate presentations and practice activities for workshop participants
- Demonstrated a willingness to benefit from feedback and work effectively with colleagues
- Demonstrated the capacity to continue to develop as a trainer.
As vice minister Hien said at the certificate ceremony in Hanoi on July 11th 2013 “MOET recognizes and highly appreciates British Council’s initiatives to support the Vietnamese education system in general and the development of trainers of primary English teachers in particular. 41 primary trainers graduated from the training course run by British Council in 2010 and 148 trainers completed this course in 2013 and 2014 in all of the three training hubs in the North, Central and the South. They have made a real contribution to improving the capacity of Primary English teaching across Vietnam.”
The teacher trainers are now working hard and participating actively in training teacher to bring positive impacts to the teaching and learning of English in the Primary school therefore meeting some of the aims of MOET’s National Foreign Languages Project 2020.
FURTHER INFORMATION
For further information on the programme, please contact the English for Education Systems Unit, British Council in Vietnam.