Indian High Commissioner Alok Prasad will hand-over scholarships to 40 English teachers under the Presidential Initiative ‘English as a Life Skill’ at the Indian Cultural Centre today.

The scholarships have been granted by the Indian Government in support of the initiative taken by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to disseminate job oriented spoken/communicative English skills to the youth in all parts of the country.

The 40 teachers will leave on August 28 to participate in a specially designed three month training of trainers course at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.

They will be trained in the teaching of job oriented spoken/communicative English and will undertake the training of English teachers in government schools in their respective provinces.

The 40 scholarship holders were selected to represent all provinces. Four were selected from each province with the exception of the Western, Central and Southern Provinces which are represented by six scholarship holders each.

The Government of India will also be funding the establishment of a Centre of English Language Training (CELT) at Peradeniya in collaboration with the English Unit of the Ministry of Education.

Two Professors from the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) Hyderabad will head the Centre that will train government schoolteachers in batches of 40 in the teaching of spoken/communicative English in our schools.