The State Government wished to upgrade the teaching of English throughout the State, and asked the British Council to work in partnership with the Secretariat of Education to design and implement this ambitious project.

Client, stakeholders, partners

• The Secretary of Education, State Government of Tocantins
• The Brazilian Government.

Focus
Transforming the English language and teaching skills of the State's teachers, and forming a community of teachers.

The project
The State Government wished to upgrade the teaching of English throughout the State, and asked the British Council to work in partnership with the Secretariat of Education to design and implement this ambitious project. Funding came from a Brazilian government programme.

The project involved three aims and phases: training (language courses), development (methodology workshops) and sustainability (actions to create an autonomous community of English teachers in the state).

The principal project activities were:

• Language development classes, taught by local teachers identified and trained by the British Council, in five towns across the State.
• Immersion courses with a focus on methodology, of 100 hours per year, delivered in three towns in the State.
• The foundation of the Association of English Teachers of the State of Tocantins. The project design integrated the Association in the project, as its main vehicle for the project's sustainability.

This very successful project provided training for 535 teachers over two years. Participant feedback was consistently excellent. It had a positive impact on the language learning of thousands of pupils throughout the State.

What the stakeholders say
A year after the end of the project, 57 teachers who had taken part answered the Question "Do you think your English and/or teaching have improved as a result of the Tocantins English project?" with unanimously positive answers. Reasons given included increased confidence, improved English, better ideas on methodology and more dynamic classes.

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