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George Wilson is Head of English and School Education at the British Council in France. The British Council works around the world contributing to raising the quality of education in schools and supporting multilingual education. George has over 20 years of experience as a language teacher, teacher educator, manager, and researcher in Argentina, Australia, France and Spain. He is the author of several publications on regional-language education in France and the UK.

Multilingual education can mean different things in different contexts. Like UNESCO, the British Council believes in the power of education systems that make use of multiple languages, including a learner’s mother tongue, a regional or national language, and an international language like English. To this end, we work with governments around the world, supporting their efforts to introduce carefully considered and balanced approaches to language in education. 

English is an international language which creates opportunities for learners globally. As such, it has an important role to play in multilingual education, but its use must not be to the detriment of other languages and particularly of learners’ mother tongues.

Research shows that learners learn best when they study in a language they understand, and yet, around the world, there is often a move to adopt English as the language of education, even when neither teachers nor learners are confident users of the language. This approach inevitably has a serious impact on learning outcomes. 

The British Council therefore recommends that, in low and middle-income contexts, learners learn an additional language, such as English, as a subject for between six and eight years before using it to study other subjects. In high-income contexts, on the other hand, we recognize that English can be successfully used as a medium of education from an earlier age, but only if there is heavy investment in training and resources to support teachers and teacher educators. 

One important project is our Language for Resilience programme training teachers of refugee children in Uganda. The official language of education in Uganda is English from Grade 4 but many refugee children do not understand English. To help support teachers and school leaders faced with this challenging situation, we commissioned three research studies to help identify the learners’ language needs. We then designed two handbooks for teachers and delivered training to help them adopt multilingual approaches to teaching and learning.

The impact of the project has been evidenced by robust evaluation, showing that trained teachers are now making significantly more use of the refugees’ familiar languages in lessons. Our approach in Uganda therefore highlights the importance of evidence-based approaches that respond to the local context and demonstrates how tailored training on multilingual practices can have a positive impact on educational practices.

Multilingual education has a vital role to play in working towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 and is therefore at the heart of our strategy around the world. It was an honour to see our experts and our guests figure so prominently in this important event, which highlighted both how much progress has been made over the last 25 years and just how much remains to be done. We look forward to working in ever-closer partnership with UNESCO to achieve our common goal of inclusive and equitable quality education for all.