Quality Assurance Consultant: ELT Programmes in Universities

About the project

The British Council in Turkey is working in partnership with the Turkish Council of Higher Education (COHE) and the Higher Education Quality Board to create a national framework for English Language Preparatory Programmes in Turkish Universities and to set out the roadmap for universities to agree on national standards. The outcomes of this consultancy will be to agree with the COHE and universities on how this national framework should look, its agreed scope and indicators of quality in English in Higher Education (HE) by the end of March 2018. 

There are over 180 universities in Turkey. 120 provide either full English Medium Instruction (EMI) across the university or partial EMI to some programmes or faculties. This EMI can take place as a 100% programme where all the courses are offered in English, or a 30% programme where at least 30% of the courses are offered in English.

Students studying in EMI programmes are required to take and pass a one year English Preparatory Programme to become eligible to study in their faculties. For students who study in Turkish, some universities offer the preparatory year as an option, but mainly support their English proficiency through online English courses in the first year. 

The British Council in Turkey has been working closely with the COHE since the publication of ‘The State of English in Higher Education’ in 2015 (more information from the research is available here). The research has also led to a pilot with five universities to implement the ‘Quality in English Programme’ in Higher Education to further increase institutional capacity and continue the national search for quality in English in HE. 

The outcomes of this pilot have been discussed with the COHE and the pilot universities which led to a request from the president of the COHE to create a national quality assurance system in partnership with the British Council, and to come up with an initial framework by the end of March 2018. 

About the role 

The British Council in Turkey is seeking an ELT consultant to deliver the following :

• an analysis, based on material provided by the British Council and telephone interviews with stakeholders, of how quality is approached currently in the Turkish context with reference to previous work done by the British Council in Turkey (approximately seven days, February 2018)
• providing input on how quality in English is approached in other contexts at national and institutional level (approximately five days, February 2018)
• planning and moderating a one day quality assurance workshop at the COHE with members from the COHE, the HE Quality Council and Directors of Schools of Foreign Languages (approximately ten days including a visit to Ankara / Istanbul, 26 February – 2 March 2018)
• writing a report to outline the recommendations from the workshop to the COHE on how the national quality framework in English should be approached, its scope and pilot implementation (five days, March 2018)
• working closely with the British Council office in Ankara to agree and review recommendations, and ensure that the workshop and the report are relevant and suitable to the Turkish Context.

We anticipate that the review, workshop planning and report writing will be done from the consultant’s base country. Workshop moderation and any pre-workshop consultations will take place in Ankara and/or Istanbul.

Qualifications and experience required

Essential

• A thorough understanding of English Language Teaching at tertiary level 
• Knowledge and understanding of national and international quality / accreditation schemes for English at tertiary level
• Knowledge and experience of national and institutional quality schemes in English at tertiary level
• Skills to plan and deliver effective workshops to policy makers
• Excellent writing skills
• Minimum five years teaching / management experience in English at tertiary level.

Desirable

• PHD Degree in Education, Assessment and Evaluation or Language Policy 
• Experience in teaching English for Academic Purposes and/or English for Specific at tertiary level.

If you are interested, please send:

• tailored CV 
• summary (max two pages) on how you would approach the review and workshop planning
• proposed daily fee

to aysen.guven@britishcouncil.org.tr by 22 January 2018.  

Please note we can only respond to successful applicants and only within ten days of the application deadline.