PAKISTAN: Struggle to raise university language skills

20 June 2010

A project launched in 2004 to halt declining English language skills among students at Pakistan's public universities has entered a second three-year phase amid concern that low language proficiency continues to hamper higher-education reforms and is putting the latest international research out of reach for academics, writes Max de Lotbinière for The Guardian.

To date the English Language Teaching Reforms, or ELTR, project has provided English language teaching training to 1,540 staff and updated teaching resources at 64 state-funded campuses at a cost of $600,000. In May the government body responsible for tertiary-level reform, the Higher Education Commission (HEC), launched the second phase of the programme, with a budget of $650,000 and a target to train a further 1,400 teachers by 2013.

But the size of the problem and slow pace of improvement have left some observers questioning the ELTR strategy.
Full report on The Guardian site

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