Helping to improve English standards in Malaysia

Anna Greene, Programme Director Malaysia, reports on the first visit for a joint Programme Board meeting between Cambridge English Language Assessment and the Ministry of Education in Malaysia.

Two days into my new role as Programme Director, Malaysia Project, at Cambridge English Language Assessment and I’m already on a plane heading to Kuala Lumpur for the first joint project board meeting with colleagues from Cambridge English and the Ministry of Education (MoE).

The board meeting will bring together the team at Cambridge English and key members from the Ministry to discuss how we will work together to reform their English language education. In August 2016, Cambridge English signed an agreement with the Ministry of Education to deliver a five-year programme of consultancy services. The aim is to help drive the Malaysian reform agenda, with the end goal of supporting the Malaysian government to raise the standard of English language learning, teaching and assessment. We have trained 270 MoE teachers and lecturers as Master Trainers and they in turn have cascaded the training down to over 11,000 teachers.

As we move into 2017, I'm looking forward to leading the successful delivery of the whole project. For me that starts right now. When I return to the UK I will continue to build a project team working on the delivery of the programme over the next four years.

So, what's in the pipeline? This year we will be delivering a wide range of products and services, from syllabus and schemes of work development, to evaluating the national assessments in order to work collaboratively with the Ministry to develop new syllabuses and assessments. There will also be a large scale roll out of training related to the new curriculum frameworks and schemes of work. We will also carry out an evaluation of in service teacher training and repeat the 2013 baseline study to monitor overall standards. An integral aim of this project is to transfer knowledge and skills from Cambridge English to the Ministry of Education in order to further develop their capacity to manage educational reform coherently and successfully. This is something I have experience of through education reform projects I have delivered on for Cambridge International Examinations, and I relish the opportunity to work with the Ministry of Education in this way.

It's an exciting time to be involved in the project so watch this space for more!

Anna Greene
Cambridge English, Programme Director Malaysia