Programme strands

We have worked with 14 state governments and trained over 9,000 master trainers through our programmes, who have gone on to train one million teachers of English since 2007. These teachers teach more than 35 million learners each year.

These programmes have helped:

• Teachers develop skills and confidence to impart student centred learning through ongoing professional development that is suited to their needs
• Learners improve their English language skills, soft skills and employability, thereby getting increased opportunities for further education or employment
• Schools improve the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom and create a positive learning environment overall
• Employers get access to a better skilled workforce with internationally benchmarked levels of spoken English proficiency.

Read more about our work here.

Partnering objective: Building on our existing innovative project and partnership models with Indian State Governments and Non Government Organisations, IUEC aims to bring positive change and development in English language education in India, leveraging best practices and the resulting innovation for mutual benefit.

STEM education holds the key for solving many of our planet’s problems. An early start is helpful for learners, industry and society as a whole. The British Council runs several STEM focused initiatives to promote STEM education and international research and collaboration in the field. English and Digital for Girls' Education (EDGE) programme aims to improve the life prospects of adolescent girls in socio economically marginalised communities by enhancing their English proficiency, digital and 21st century skills, awareness of social issues and improving the leadership skills of a smaller group of peer leaders drawn from the same group.

Through the UK India Education Research Initiative (UKIERI), we have:

• Engaged 300 Schools 4000+ Higher Education Institutes and 200 Vocational/Technical Institutes
• Trained 8,000 school leaders and 400 Tutor Facilitators across 300 schools

Partnering objective: Working with the State and Central agencies in school education systems, this theme aims to build capacity of STEM educators, teachers and leaders, resulting in making the teaching, assessment and learning of STEM more practical and real life focused, in turn driving improved learner outcomes in Government schools across India.

We have worked extensively towards internationalisation and systems development in higher education. Our policy dialogues on World University rankings aimed at promoting international rankings and benchmarking of Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) have resulted in:

• Debut of more than five Indian institutes among the top 500 World Universities. There were only three Indian HEIs that appeared in the 2013 rankings and 25 in 2018
• Development of newer teaching methodologies at 198 HE institutes aimed at imparting employability skills to 85,000 students
• The British Council announced the 70th Anniversary Scholarships to promote women in STEM research. In 2017-18,103 Indian women and girls received full tuition scholarships to study a Master’s programme in STEM subjects at 43 UK institutions for the academic year 2018-2019. In 2019, British Council awarded 60 full tuition scholarships for Women in STEM
• In 2018, under the GREAT Britain campaign, the British Council offered 57 full tuition scholarships. In 2019, GREAT will award 35 full tuition scholarships to promising students from India.

Partnering objective: While promoting India’s internationalisation agenda through IUEC, we also aim to address gender issues in higher education through research, insight and gender sensitisation of faculty by effective use of digital and online learning.

Providing high quality skills training for young people is a priority for both India and the UK. In order to enhance skills and employability of young people, we build partnerships that create awareness, identify best practices and build mutual contacts through high quality research work, projects, policy dialogues and dissemination events.

We have delivered innovative projects such as:

• Teach India, a programme executed in partnership with the Times of India (India’s premier mainline daily) and over 120 Indian NGOs, resulted in over 60 per cent job offers for 40,000 learners (18-30 year old) trained by 3,500 volunteer teachers who were directly trained by us
• In the EU Vocational Education and English Skills Training project, conducted along with the Confederation of Indian Industries and City and Guilds (UK), we helped 11,232 target learners to successfully complete the course and provided access to more than 900 jobs in a pilot job fair organised by us
• Under the UKIERI Skills Initiative, we delivered 60 events on policy dialogues, networking, dissemination workshops and outreach activities. 66 Skills Partnerships were created to support curriculum development and deliver industry relevant training

Partnering objective: With an aim to support India’s skills mission and the country’s young professionals specifically, the IUEC intends to work with the State and Central agencies to strengthen skills training systems, uplift learning and assessment frameworks to international standards and increase employability of students pursuing vocational education.