British Council Chief Executive Scott McDonald has arrived in Bangladesh for a three-day visit from 29 September to 1 October, meeting government representatives, education leaders, teachers, students and cultural partners in Dhaka and Rajshahi.
On his first day, McDonald met Education Minister and Primary and Mass Education Minister A N M Ehsanul Hoque Milon to discuss Bangladesh’s education priorities and opportunities for UK-Bangladesh collaboration. He also met representatives of 10 Minute School, a British Council partner, to discuss expanding access to English language learning and internationally recognised assessment. Later he met UK alumni at the “Connecting People, Sharing Impact: British Council Grantee and UK Alumni Showcase”.
During his Rajshahi visit, McDonald will launch and hand over the British Council’s English Teachers Needs for Professional Development Analysis Report at Helenabad Government Primary School. The report is based on interviews with 641 teachers and observations of 32 classrooms across Bangladesh, examining teachers’ professional learning needs and ways to improve teacher development and the education system. The British Council’s primary education work has helped strengthen the skills of around 1,700 Master Trainers.
McDonald will meet Project Headway leadership to discuss collaboration in IELTS, British curriculum education and English-language assessment. At Varendra Research Museum, Bangladesh’s oldest museum, he will see the impact of a Cultural Protection Fund partnership with Durham University on heritage preservation, professional skills and institutional capacity.
He will also meet young people involved in the Youth Connect: Digital Citizenship and Misinformation Resilience project, which has trained 120 young people from Rajshahi University and Varendra University in digital citizenship and tackling mis- and disinformation.
The visit will conclude in Dhaka with engagements on higher education, including the Higher Education Acceleration and Transformation (HEAT) partnership and the British Council Partner Schools Principal’s Meet 2026. The British Council has more than 210 partner schools across Bangladesh.
British Council Chief Executive Scott McDonald said, “Bangladesh is a country with enormous ambition and a dynamic young population. I look forward to exploring how the British Council can build on our longstanding partnerships, bring together expertise and ideas from both countries, and create more opportunities for people in Bangladesh and the UK to learn from and work with one another.”
McDonald will also attend a performance of “Tobuo Jege Uthi (Still I Rise)” at Rajshahi Zilla Shilpakala Academy by Spardha Independent Theatre Collective, supported through the British Council’s Women of the World Grants Programme.
