The British Council organised the first of its three IELTS Rewards 2018 events at its Dhaka University campus office on Tuesday 16 January 2018. The event aimed to give an overview of the current IELTS market landscape and explore how the British Council and its stakeholders can collaboratively work together to further establish IELTS in Higher Education in Bangladesh.
UGC chairman, Prof Abdul Mannan graced the event as chief guest. Heather Forbes, Regional Exams Director for the British Council for South Asia and Andriani Papapericleous, Director-Examinations for British Council’s Bangladesh also addressed the event.
The key highlight of today’s event was British Council IELTS Scholarships 2018 which was launched on 18 December 2017. Attended by university personnel, educators and representatives from over 20 English medium instructed schools and 50 IELTS registration centres, the event kicked off with a presentation on IELTS global updates by the British Council’s Director-Examinations Bangladesh, Andriani Papapericleous. She addressed how the test has been performing on a global scale and where Bangladesh stands in comparison to other countries. This was followed by a speech by Heather Forbes where she highlighted the significance of IELTS in higher education across the world and how the test can positively contribute to higher education in Bangladesh.
UGC chairman, Prof Abdul Mannan was next on stage to share his views on IELTS: “IELTS can help institutions in Bangladesh with standardisation in times of this growing economic imperative to recruit new students and as a result enhance the overall quality of decision-making in the area of student recruitment.’’
Following on, Imran Saifur, an English Language professional and teacher at the British Council Teaching Centre, gave the audience further insight into how the skills assessed through IELTS are required at various stages of an individual’s academic career, and how this credible and incorporable assessment could aid institutions across Bangladesh in terms of quality assessment of their future graduates.
The final session of the event comprised a presentation of this year’s British Council IELTS Scholarships offerings. This year, for the first time the British Council has also made this scholarship available to students who are planning to pursue their higher education in Bangladesh. They are offering three scholarships worth BDT 300,000 each to study abroad and four scholarships worth BDT 150,000 each to study in-country. The core ethos of this scheme is to ‘promote access to higher education’, thus building the foundation for a more stable and economically prosperous Bangladesh. This campaign is now live and applications close on 31 March 2018.
This event is also scheduled to be held at the Rose View Hotel in Sylhet and the Peninsula Chittagong on 23 January 2018 and 25 January 2018 respectively.
For more information, please visit www.britishcouncil.org.bd/en/IELTSScholarships2018