British Council

The British Council in Thailand

After three and a half years in Thailand, Andrew Glass OBE, Director of the British Council in Thailand is reflecting on representing the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities; on the British Council’s role in Thailand and the global stage as well as looking forward to 2020.

In conversation with Expat Life, he talks about his ambitions, challenges and the impact of British Council work that has transformed so many people’s lives.

Tell us about yourself

I came to Thailand in September 2014 after previously working in different roles for the British Council in Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Germany, UK, Serbia and Kuwait.

In my free time I like spending time in Thailand’s nature, long distance trekking, good novels and keeping up to date with what’s happening in the world. I am a trustee of a UK charity for people with Addison’s Disease. My wife is from Spain and we have two cats from Kuwait. My first degree was in Politics and German from Bristol University.

I also have teaching qualifications, an MA in Teaching English and a Diploma in Management. I speak Spanish, German, Serbian and Italian – some of them rather rusty. I was awarded an OBE in the 2012 Queen’s Honours List

The role of the British Council on the world stage and Thailand

The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities.

We work with over 100 countries across the world in the fields of arts and culture, English language, education and civil society. We were founded in 1934 and are a UK charity governed by Royal Charter and a UK public body. We’ve been working in Thailand since 1952.

Agenda to support Thailand and UK priorities

There are a number of shared agendas between the UK and Thailand where we can create opportunities for people and build longer term relationships.

Both countries are interested in the skills and knowledge agenda; nurturing creativity; promoting internationalisation and cross-sectoral innovation; and developing partnerships in order to develop greater shared prosperity. These areas are all about mutuality and learning from each other.

British Council

There are other areas where perhaps the traffic is more in one direction – many students and young professionals in Thailand want to learn English, get UK qualifications or study in the UK. We work on the principle that all this directly supports Thailand’s agenda to move towards a higher value services economy and reduce inequality and the UK’s agenda to strengthen its relations internationally.

UK universities are interested in stronger research links as well as offering their services in different ways to international students. UK artists and arts institutions learn and grow in partnership with international colleagues. We see the Ministry of Education here coming to us to support their teacher training and English language assessment.

Returning Thai graduates from the UK are excited to exploit their learning and develop in areas where the UK has a great story, such as creative hubs or social enterprise.

Priority towards 2020
We group our work in three strategic themes.
The themes are:
• Raising levels of English
• Internationalising Higher
• Education and Science
• Building a creative economy

I think these are deliberately fairly simple and cover what we do with individual customers as well as partners. Each theme covers a number of services or projects. They correspond to the ‘market’ in the widest sense I have just described. I’m a real believer in the importance of clarity, simplicity and focus when talking about what we do.

I am also keen to reflect the totality of what we do and change the brand perception that we are just about teaching English or delivering IELTS, incredibly important as these areas are! In the last three years we have considerably grown our presence across all forms of media and developed extremely important media partnerships with media such as True, the Standard and Wallpaper.

Define ‘impact led’ organisation
It’s about responding to the challenges and opportunities in both countries in our core thematic areas, being clear about the difference we want to make and stating all that in clear outcome statements. Then it’s about getting on with ‘doing it’ and demonstrating the results of what we have achieved. It is also about scale, focus and stopping doing small things which don’t add up too much.

Fame Lab

Let me give a concrete example. Both countries need more scientists to develop their economy and address social and environmental problems. Not enough young people are studying science and then going into research. That leads to the question of how to popularise science among young people and the wider public? The UK has had strong results in the last decade in reversing this trend at both school and university level so how can we use this experience in Thailand?

We work with Thai science institutions to help popularise science subjects and give science students tools to help in their research in order to help ultimately support Thailand 4.0. How can we do that? One tool is a competition called FameLab, which encourages young people to study science, gives skills and opportunities to young scientists to work internationally and engage a wider public in the importance of science.

Lab

So much wonderful science investigation goes unnoticed! By working with True and a range of Thai institutions we magnify the impact we achieve. We can measure short-term changes in perceptions but, of course, longer term change and impact in, say, the number of people studying science or longer term research collaboration cannot be measured overnight and requires a sustained effort.

Challenges and progress about your work in Thailand, especially in English teaching areas
One example is that the English teaching market is very competitive.

Changing demographics present a challenge to all providers, be it in people wanting to learn closer to home or the workplace or decreasing numbers of children per family. So it is up to us to continue to offer a quality service, give customers what they need, refresh the offer to add value and get closer to the customers.

We have developed new programmes such as Primary Plus, MyClass and MyClass Plus to respond to the needs of our customers.

How Regional English Training Centres (RETC) project can solve English teaching in Thailand in long term?
I think it is true to say that the RETC project is the single largest and most important project British Council has been involved in during its 66 years in Thailand.

I am delighted that we have been able to respond to the request of the Ministry and the drive and ambition of Dr Teerakiat and others to make a real difference to English learning across the state system.

It started as a 6 week ‘bootcamp’ in March 2016 and somehow that name has stuck! In my opinion it has been successful at a project level because of the scale, the long term commitment, the developing project model and, crucially, at a people level.

We have recruited wonderful trainers who’ve given their all to give the Thai teachers a great experience and those teachers have responded equally energetically to a challenging programme and been open to changing their approaches and trying about new things. We are developing Thai master trainers and working with supervisors who can keep the momentum after the project has finished.

We ensure that there is good follow up and mentoring after the training courses to encourage teachers to put their
learning into practice, get feedback from colleagues and share with colleagues. So far 8,000 teachers have been through the programme. Satisfaction levels among teachers are at almost unreal levels of well over 90%. A lot of teaching in Thai schools is based on ‘rote memorisation’ learning. More communicative, participatory styles of teaching increase students’ motivation, develop thinking skills and get them to use the language they are learning.

How to build inclusive society
We are proud in the British Council of having a strong commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). That should be the case of an organisation working to create opportunity and build trust. It is no secret that there are high levels of inequality in Thailand and different people and groups can get a different start in life.

One of the key things about RETC for me is that it reaches across the whole country, training teachers in almost every town and village and through them supporting their students.

Another example of our contribution in EDI is what we are doing to support women and girls and build sustainable communities in rural areas of Thailand in the crafts sector. There are some wonderful examples which we have showcased with Wallpaper magazine of craftspeople who have benefited from our training in design, social enterprise and networking with their peers and gone on to preserve their heritage and create more sustainable jobs in the community.

“The English teaching market is very competitive. Changing demographics present a challenge to all providers, be it in people wanting to learn closer to home or the workplace or decreasing numbers of children per family.”

Looking back, what would be your legacy in Thailand?
I’ve still got some time left on my posting and lots I want us to achieve. I think it’s a bit early to be thinking about my legacy and it’s also about a team not just me, but if you press me, the Regional English Training Centres project has made a huge difference to many people in the country.

Through this project, we hope English can provide a better life chance and a step change for the whole country. In terms of leading our organisation, I think we are more focussed and look at real prioritisation, linking our work very closely to the needs of both countries’ agendas. Our work also touches more people’s lives nationwide beyond
Bangkok.

(Visited 220 times, 1 visits today)
Expat Life in Thailand is a community lifestyle magazine for expatriates (a person who has citizenship in at least one country, but who is living in another country) living in Thailand with an appetite and a zest for the best of life!