The role of the coordinating language tutor or year abroad officer is a crucial one both for the university candidate and the British Council. In early October every year the British Council sends all coordinating language tutors and year abroad officers the updated publicity brochure.

15 October 2009 marks the start of the recruitment round for 2010-2011. From this date onwards candidates are required to apply online. The process is described here.

The application form and reference form are available here for your information but please keep in mind that applicants are expected to apply online unless there are medical reasons that might prevent them from doing so. Such a case should be discussed with us before the candidate starts the application process. Normally year abroad meetings/briefings are held by universities at this time, making use of Language Assistant Ambassadors. The coordinating tutor or year abroad officer submits all completed application forms together by the deadline of 1 December (31 January in Scotland and Northern Ireland). A separate form called AD/F3 cover should be completed for each country, and AD/F3 list should be used for the names of your candidates in alphabetical order.  For our internal administrative purposes Latin America counts as one country. All undergraduates (2nd year and final year) studying a language as a main subject or subsidiary must apply through their university coordinator.

The administration of the Language Assistants programme in England and Wales works to a very specific and tight schedule every year. Deadlines are therefore extremely important.

All candidates will go through roughly the same application process and will receive very similar information. However, the fact that we run programmes with 16 countries worldwide means that the timing of, for example, interviews, matching meetings, allocation letters and pre-departure information packs, varies from one country to another.

The role of the university coordinator continues after 1 December (31 January in Scotland and Northern Ireland). The British Council will be in regular contact with regard to the progress of your candidates’ applications (including reminders re missing documents/information). We will inform you where candidates are called to interview (please urge those candidates to prepare for interview). The principal documents which we send at various stages to candidates and later to appointed assistants have been brought together for you to view on the Documentation page.

Prior to departure but especially while they are in post assistants are very much encouraged to access and to use the LanguageAssistant website. This unique resource offers a wealth of teaching ideas, useful links, advice for lesson preparation and topics on life and culture in the UK. The British Council LanguageAssistant manual, which we include in our pre-departure information pack, is also downloadable from this site. Furthermore, the British Council sets up a Discussion List (closed forum) for all language assistants from the UK offering access to virtual mentors (for both primary and secondary level age groups). This, too, can be accessed from the LanguageAssistant website.

Undergraduates whose university has an extended university charter may be eligible for Erasmus status during their language assistantship which is considered as a work placement. Please contact the Erasmus co-ordinator in your own institution for further information.