British Council celebrates 50th jubilee
British Council celebrates 50th jubilee
The British Council celebrates 50 years in Indonesia this year
and will be marked with several events.
Most immediate is the "Sign-up Sessions" planned for five
cities -- Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya and Bali --
beginning June 13 and June 14 in Jakarta.
It features Fast Track processing for admission to educational
institutions in Britain, particularly for over 400 scholarships.
The emphasis being Britain is doing all it can during the
monetary crisis to help with Britain offering 20 percent to 60
percent less in costs to students.
Also in June is a British Film Week and an English Language
Teaching Conference in Malang.
A Photographic Exhibition is September will feature Europeans
in Asia and Asians in Europe.
Shakespeare's play The Comedy of Errors will be brought to
Jakarta in November by the Watermill Theater.
Other British Council activities have included:
* An Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded contract (US$4.2
million), which commenced January 1997 to develop the English
language capacity of 14 lead universities, mainly in eastern
Indonesia.
* The British Chevening Awards in 1997, which attracted 5,000
applications for about 70 places.
* Management of the training of some 300 Indonesians in Britain,
under various contracts to the British and Indonesian governments
included funding by the World Bank and the ADB.
* Professional support for the development of environmental
education centers in East Java and South Sulawesi.
* Two thousand trainees underwent English training at the British
Council's Language Center in 1996. Clients included banks,
industrial and commercial concerns, hotels, airlines, teachers,
nurses and many government officials. This is a full-cost
recovery activity generating a turnover of over 750,000 per
annum.
* The Jakarta library has 9,000 members, with an average of 250
people visiting daily. On-line access to the Internet and other
database is now established. The Surabaya Center has 2,000
members and hosts a wide range of seminars and other activities.
* The Kosh dance and drama group toured in December 1996; 900
students attended one performance at Petra University, Surabaya.
* Senior educationalists developing an accreditation system for
all higher education undertook a special study tour to the U.K.
in April 1997.
* On-going research links, funded through a DFID grant, include
fisheries technology in Semarang, tropical peat forestry in
Kalimantan, regional planning for Bali, development of
agricultural entrepreneurs in Sulawesi and West Java and public
health in Yogyakarta.
The British Council also opened five Indonesian-British
Education Centers in major cities in Java and Sumatra. These are
providing assistance and study opportunities in Britain to large
numbers of students.