No more English at the British Council in Moscow?
The British Council is renowned worldwide for its English language teaching programmes. According to their website, in 2005-2006 they employed over 2000 teachers to teach 1.1 million English class hours to 325,000 learners in 53 countries.
Unfortunately though, in the New Year, their teaching centre in Moscow is to stop providing English classes. This is reportedly due to the Russian Foreign Ministry’s demand that the Council apply for a teaching license. A license has not been required before and applying for one is, according to the British Council’s Natalya Minchecnko, quoted in this article, “an arduous and time-consuming process which the British Council finds practically impossible to complete”.
Although the students who have signed up for classes in 2007 will have to look elsewhere, the British Council does stress that its non-teaching services will not be affected, and that it remains committed to “working in Moscow and across Russia and delivering projects and activities in science, arts and education, including the Information Centres and exams”.
What do you think about the Foreign Ministry’s demand and the British Council’s decision? Post a comment below…
January 7th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Well this is a shame. I live in Thailand and have seen what the Ministry of Education is doing here. A lot of schools are suffering as a result of government legislation about qualifications required by teachers. And now it looks like a similar thing is starting in Russia. Maybe it’s the start of a global conspiracy…!
January 13th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Putin does not want young people to speak other languages and get to know other views on the world than those of the Russian propaganda…
Another possibility is that the British Council branch in Moscow did not bribe the responsible person…
I live in a post-communist country ….