For 75 years the British Council has been teaching English around the world. Whilst we’ve remained committed to excellence in English teaching, advances in technology and the internet mean the landscape of the classroom is very different today from 75 years ago.

As the British Council’s International Climate Champions prepare for the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December, an exhibition of work from their ‘Cape Farewell’ project has been on show in Italy as part of the Rome International Film Festival. Cape Farewell aims to produce art inspired by scientific research, which can be used to draw attention to the issues of climate change in an imaginative way.

India may be one of the world’s fast-growing developing economies, but more than a quarter of its over-a-billion population still lives in poverty.  And it also has one of the fastest growing job-seeking populations, with over 12 million young people joining those looking for work each year. According to employers, the ability to communicate in English really does make a difference in terms of getting work and earning a higher wage.

Eighteen-year-old Iraqi pianist and British Council Global Changemaker, Zuhal Sultan, saw her dreams come true when the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq played for the very first time this summer. After successfully auditioning online, over 30 young musicians were selected to form the orchestra. Kurdish, Arab and Christian musicians came together for rehearsals in the north of the country before playing their first concert in August.

For the past ten years the International School Award has been recognising teachers up and down the UK for their work in bringing ‘the world into their classrooms’. Sometimes compared to a modern day pen-pal scheme, the benefits of international school-linking are much greater and record numbers of schools seem to think so too.  The number of schools receiving the International School Award reached an all time high of over 700 this year.