India’s importance as a world power is already a given. To fuel continuing growth, the country is committed to a major expansion in its higher and vocational education and there is growing demand for English skills. Both are areas where the UK can position itself as India’s preferred partner. Opportunities for closer engagement also exist in climate security and promoting the UK’s creative and knowledge economy.

Young Indians and the Indian government turn to the British Council for English language skills.

This year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown challenged the British Council to train 750,000 teachers of English over the next five years. Alongside Indian Prime Minster Dr Manmohan Singh, he outlined our plans to develop a website that will offer learners and teachers around the world ready access to the materials, resources and qualifications they need to develop their skills in English.

Demand for our English language services outstrips supply in many parts of the world. We are known to provide world-class teachers and learning materials. In India alone it is estimated that 5.5 million teachers and 200 million children will require English training over the next five to ten years.

In response to this and the Prime Minister’s challenge we developed a partnership with the State of West Bengal and created an English teachers’ handbook for 200,000 teachers working with 2.3 million children. In Punjab we have developed a programme for master trainers to work with 200,000 English language teachers reaching two million pupils. In New Delhi we have developed training for 5,000 English teachers, and in Andhra Pradesh, we have been working with 40,000 teachers to deliver vocational skills to 100,000 young adults. We have started to develop the training programmes to allow us to meet our target of 750,000 trained teachers, whom we believe will ultimately reach millions of children over the next five years.

We are also working with the corporate sector in India on consultancy projects and teacher training. In September 2007 we worked with Barclays, who had low customer satisfaction scores in two of their contact centres in India. We have delivered the first trainer training course to improve standards of English language skills with call centre staff, with a further two programmes planned in 2008.

This work is supported by the new range of innovative English resources we have been piloting. These include: resources that can be accessed specifically by mobile phone; MP3 and new online audio materials; and a learning zone on Second Life with interactive LearnEnglish activities and quests based upon UK culture. All of these are free to access at www.learnenglish.org.uk. In addition we launched a new site in partnership with the BBC – www.teachingenglish.org.uk – for teachers, with resources that include lesson plans and worksheets, information on training and conferencing, podcasts and videos. So far the site is on track to receive one million unique users every month.