My first encounter with the British Council must have been about 50 years ago. As a child growing up in Colombo, I was a regular visitor to the library which was housed on the seaside of the Galle Road in Kollupitiya or Fort. It was an old house, with lots and lots of books! I loved going to the British Council Library. Sri Lanka in the ‘70s was a time of austerity and shortages of many things, including books, and as a child who loved to read, the British Council Library opened up a whole new world for me.
I returned to the Library two decades later with my own children, soon after it was moved to the Alfred House Garden premises. The Library continued to be a source of much pleasure, with endless reading material, both fiction and non-fiction, for all of us.
The British Council’s work in the higher education sector is of particular value to us because the UK universities are among the best in the world, and Sri Lankans greatly appreciate good education.
However, as a university academic, I have had quite a different relationship with the British Council. In 1992 – ‘93, as a postgraduate student, I benefited tremendously from a British Council Higher Education Link between the University of Peradeniya’s Faculty of Medicine and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Towards the end of that same decade, I was instrumental in setting up our own British Council Higher Education Link with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Together we developed a short course on Community Health, for Public Health Inspectors in Sri Lanka, a category of health workers that had very limited opportunities for career development. Under this same programme, we also established research collaborations that resulted in a partnership that has endured to this day and produced work of global significance on the subject of snakebite envenoming.
After a hiatus of some years, I now enjoy working with the British Council on another very different project that also links academics in Sri Lanka and the UK. The Quality Assurance pillar of the British Council’s Transform Project supports Edinburgh Napier University, the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka and the universities under the UGC to work together on strengthening research and quality assurance activities in Sri Lankan universities. This project has enabled me, in my capacity as Director of the Quality Assurance Council of the UGC, to learn a great deal about quality assurance activities in higher education in the UK, and in Scotland in particular.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the British Council has done a great job of fostering cultural relationships between the UK and Sri Lanka over the 50-year period in which I have known it.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the British Council has done a great job of fostering cultural relationships between the UK and Sri Lanka over the 50-year period in which I have known it. As an individual and as a university academic, the British Council has presented me with opportunities that have supported my own personal growth and that of many others in so many different ways.
The British Council’s work in the higher education sector is of particular value to us because the UK universities are among the best in the world, and Sri Lankans greatly appreciate good education.
Prof. Nilanthi de Silva is a Senior Professor of Parasitology, at the University of Kelaniya and Director, Quality Assurance Council of the University Grants Commission.