By Tilly Barrie
The Director of British Council in Sierra Leone says the facility is undergoing extensive renovation and refurbishment to improve on the public facilities which is expected to be completed by the end of October or in early November. Louisa Waddingham however told journalists that this would not affect their activities. She said they had moved their offices to the ground floor which was more accessible to the public and that their language proficiency (IELTS) exams would still be held where she assured there was a spacious reception hall. The improvements she said would make them customer-driven with more services and programmes being made available. She announced that the British Council had one floor which was still vacant and available to prospective tenants. The Council’s Project Delivery Manager in charge of schools, Michael Dennis says their schools programmes, which had been going on since 2008 throughout the country, would continue. He said the programme had not included Kono and Bonthe districts because of the lack of a link person in the two districts and that there were plans already underway to start it there. He told Politico that they had been working with the Ministry of Education and Conference of Principals and Head Teachers of Freetown and the regions in this regard. Dennis said that some teachers had been in classrooms for very long and needed to know what was happening globally hence the training on things like climate change and HIV/AIDS. The school programme, he said, would carry on until 2015 when they hoped that about a third of the teachers would have gone through it. He called on sponsors to join in. He said they had sent two of their facilitators for training to Nigeria and another two to Britain on a global citizenship course, while two went to Tanzania on a school leadership course. The British Council Sierra Leone is one of the oldest in Africa having been here for 70 years. © Politico 15/08/13
