The first ever open day for agents, organised by English UK, the British Council in Brazil and the British Consulate, will take place at the British Council office in Rio on Tuesday 21 November 2006. Selected agents will be invited to the event.

The consultation document can be found here. 

The following is the Government news release on controls on Bulgarian and Romanian people coming to the UK post-accession.

wms-charging-consultation.pdf; press-release.pdf

Accreditation UK, the quality assessment scheme for English language teaching centres which is run by English UK and the British Council in partnership, now has over 400 members.

Visit http://www.britishcouncil.org/accreditation for information about the scheme.

Two written questions have been answered this morning, from Damian Green (Conservative Education spokesman) and Mike Weir (SNP MP for Angus and SNP spokesman on work and pensions; and energy and trade and industry) on visas and language colleges.

The first answer in particular provides a useful summary of the Government’s current plans in this area, and the second emphasises the importance of the points based system in “tackling abuse” of the sponsorship system by international students. (more…)

Cambridge ESOL is holding a series of new seminars for teachers preparing candidates for FCE, CAE and CPE. These seminars have never been given in the UK before and are free of charge. Please see the attached flyer for further details:

4226-main-suite-email-flyer.pdf