Teaching for Success helps transform the quality of teaching in primary and secondary schools. It exemplifies the British Council’s vision that all teachers in the world have high quality continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities that improve their own professional understanding and practice and their learners’ success. The approach is underpinned by the British Council Frameworks of Continuing Professional Development for teachers and teacher educators.

Working in partnership

We work with governments, agencies and institutions to understand priorities and the needs of teachers and learners. We collaborate on the design of CPD programmes and systems which meet these requirements and are matched to the local context. We work with other UK organisations to bring the widest range of expertise to each project and programme. 

Our goal

Our goal is quality in the classroom, where teachers are competent, knowledgeable, highly motivated, committed to their profession and able to innovate and achieve the best for their learners.

The British Council brings its global professional expertise to create sustainable teacher development solutions which:

  • build local continuing professional development systems and the human resource to maintain them
  • meet identified teacher needs and government priorities
  • have a positive and lasting impact on quality in the classroom
  • manage the factors across the whole education system that impact on achieving the goals for teacher development and quality in the classroom
  • embed equality, diversity and inclusion at every level
  • make the most effective use of technology for learning.

Ensuring outcomes in the classroom

Teaching for Success uses the following approach to building effective continuing professional development systems to improve the quality of teaching:

Diagram illustrating the Teaching for Success approach
The Teaching for Success approach  ©

British Council

What are our models of engagement?

Teaching for Success encompasses a variety of models of engagement designed to suit the varied needs of our partners and clients.

In India, our main focus to date has been on supporting state governments in planning and implementing large-scale programmes with a view to collaboratively building capacity and sustainability within the system for the future. These programmes can take a variety of forms, including cascade design (including using a day release model), the establishment of cadres of mentors and Master Trainers, support for Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs) and self-access programmes.

The British Council works with the SCERT and other state bodies such as the English Language Teaching Institutes (ELTIs) to design need-based trainer training and teacher training programmes. These programmes are aligned to the principles of the National Curriculum Framework (2005) and the NCERT English Position Paper and our course materials are linked to the curriculum and textbooks used in each state.

Through the Teaching for Success approach, we:

  • enable our partners and clients to access high-quality consultancy services from the best of international expertise to give them insight into aspects of the education system and inform further decision-making
  • provide effective training through licensing our teacher development materials: we train the trainers, conduct monitoring and evaluation and ensure quality of delivery
  • support our partners with assessment and curriculum reform and policy review. 
  • take a transformative whole systems approach to improving the provision of pre and or in-service teacher education.

Published examples of our needs analysis studies can be found here.

How do we monitor and evaluate projects?

Monitoring and evaluation has a variety of purposes as highlighted below. The process enables:

  • learning and improvement in both the planning, management and academic components of a large-scale programme
  • opportunities for professional development to be exploited
  • accountability of all stakeholders at all levels
  • data is generated to reliably demonstrate the impact of the intervention.

Once the objectives, potential outputs and outcomes of the project have been agreed and finalised in collaboration with the project stakeholders, we create a monitoring and evaluation plan to allow us to track progress. We then conduct a baseline study of current skills and teaching in relation to the project outcomes. 

The purpose of the baseline study is to:

  • provide a picture of current practice 
  • help us to design the specific content of the training programme 
  • provide data which can be used as for comparative purposes at key milestones during the lifetime of the project.

In order to evaluate the overall impact of the project, baseline, mid-project and post-project monitoring and evaluation is completed by British Council trainers and consultants. External evaluations are commissioned wherever possible, in consultation with our partners.

What is our funding model?

The British Council is a charity registered in England, Wales and Scotland and it is part of our charitable objectives to develop a wider knowledge of the English language.

Since 2007 we have worked in partnership with 12 state governments in India to design and implement large-scale ELT development projects which aim to improve the level of English training and teaching in government schools. This is done through a collaborative funding model. The direct costs of delivery of the project is borne by the state governments, sometimes with support from other funding organisations. The British Council in turn directly contributes towards certain components of the project.

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