The English for Universities project aims to help Ukrainian institutions develop sustainable English language teaching capacity, introduce standards in universities and improve language teaching and learning to create more opportunities for effective engagement in international collaboration initiatives.
The project started in 2014 with the baseline study of the provision and role of English in higher education in Ukraine. Initially, 15 National State universities were involved. This number has since grown to 32 universities from across Ukraine. We published the findings from the baseline study in 2017. You can read them here.
The baseline research has formed an important aspect of the recent policy dialogue with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. In the second phase of the project, an ambitious programme of teacher development was set up. We have directly engaged with 2,813 teachers from 32 universities, who have disseminated the content and learning to a further 7,000 teachers.
2019 is the last year of the project, and it was important to evaluate its impact both in terms of quality of teaching and learning in partnering institutions, but also in respect to education system and policy changes. Thus, the project impact evaluation research was initiated and took place in October - November 2018.
During this period, Professor Simon Borg made field visits to eight universities, meeting teachers and students, observing classes and engaging university authorities in discussions on the impact of the project. More than 2500 students and about 500 teachers were involved in the evaluation survey. The British Council presented the results of the impact study in February 2019 and also at IATEFL Liverpool 2019 conference in April 2019. The report can be found by the link. You may also watch video of this presentation on our YouTube channel here. Simon Borg has answered some questions posted during the streaming of the presentation here in this document. He has also posted some thoughts on the impact of the project on ESP (English for Specific Purposes) teaching in higher education in Ukraine on his blog.