English language teaching

We know that effective English language teaching starts with excellent teachers; we not only have nearly 50 years’ experience of recruiting native-English-speaking qualified teachers but we also work with governments to offer transformational training and improvement programmes to ensure effective capacity building for local English language teachers.

Our ELT solutions range from delivery in small clusters of schools to across a national curriculum and everything in between. We support, train and develop our English language teachers to make sure they are the best they can be and to make sure that students taught by our teachers get the very best English language education.

A rich history in ELT

As an organisation, we have our origins in international English language teaching, or ELT. For 50 years, our effective, evidence-informed practice has been making a vital contribution to the development of the ELT profession at both the practical and theoretical levels. We seek to improve practice in ELT  or English as a second language (ESL) classrooms, while our research and support has helped develop the discipline of applied linguistics in the ELT area.

With our centre of English language teaching excellence in Brunei, we are an authority on best practice. However, all of our programmes and supporting material are designed specifically for each local context. We know that a solution for Brunei needs to be redesigned to achieve excellence in the Middle East and reworked again to effectively aid social mobility in India.

English language teaching in Brunei

Education Development Trust has been working in Brunei as CfBT Education Services since 1984 and has helped the Bruneian government to achieve exceptional results: of the seven top-ranking Asian nations and territories in the PISA 2012 rankings (Shanghai China, Hong Kong China, Korea, Japan, Singapore and Macau China) Bruneian students’ English language proficiency outperforms all but Singapore. We work in close partnership with Brunei’s Ministry of Education to recruit, support and develop expert English teachers to support the country’s aim to provide a bilingual education.

English language teaching in the Middle East

We work with teachers of Syrian refugees in the Middle East in two host countries: Lebanon and Jordan. We build upon the existing skillsets of teachers of refugees and school leaders in the teaching of English and subjects taught in the medium of English. We use tried and tested pedagogical approaches to empower teachers and improve their practice and our provision has been designed specifically to cope with the on-the-ground challenges.

Our English language teaching work in the Middle East is largely funded by the ringfenced funds resulting from our merger with the Alexandria Schools Trust (AST) in 2014. We are committed to fulfilling the former charity’s mission, promoting and maintaining teaching of the English language in the Middle East.