To help teachers of English enhance their professional skills, as well as to show them the new education standards and encourage their mutual networking opportunities, in 2018 the British Council Latvia continued co-operation with the Latvian Association of Teachers of English (LATE).
A summer school was organised for English teachers, the annual LATE conference and an event in Daugavpils.
A summer school for English teachers called “Coping with competences”, gathering 54 teachers from different places in Latvia, was held in Priekuļi from 15 to 18 August 2018. The focus was also on integration of the teachers with Russian background and the teachers who work at minority schools in Latvia: 34 % of teachers were from the Russian speaking background.
22 teachers from the Summer School project have applied for the British Council’s further teacher professional development course “Teaching for Success” that was held on-line in autumn 2018. Series of lectures, practical activities in pairs and in teams within the training were organised to enhance variety of knowledge sharing and to bring foreign and local professionals together. Working with teachers of various backgrounds was a precious experience in itself – there were teachers from large and small schools, with different number of pupils in their classrooms, from different ethnic groups. Such an experience gave an opportunity not only to acquire useful knowledge and skills, but also to establish long-term partnership.
Based on the new competence project teachers have created materials to be used going forward in their everyday work at school.
The annual LATE conference was organised at Rīga 1st gymnasium from 18 to 19 August 2018, gathering 150 participants from the entire Latvia in order to continue informing English teachers on the competence based curriculum. The topic of the conference was “Educating pupils for the world of the 21st century: competence based teaching and learning”. The British Ambassador to Latvia Mr. Keith Shannon took part in the opening of the conference. He emphasized the importance of the teachers work with pupils, teaching not only the language, but also life skills.