Baku, November 29, AZERTAC bp on behalf of its co-venturers in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Shah Deniz and South Caucasus Pipeline projects – SOCAR, TPAO, LUKOIL, NICO, MOL, Equinor, SGC, INPEX, ExxonMobil, ITOCHU, TotalEnergies, Eni, ONGCVidesh – has announced the successful completion of an educational programme it has been supporting to enhance the quality of English language teaching at schools in Ganja. The project was implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Science and Education and is part of bp’s and its co-venturers’ commitment to helping develop education and enhancing overall capacity-building in the country’s educational institutions. The programme was specifically designed to help around 120 schoolteachers enhance their English language proficiency and improve their teaching methodology. This was achieved by providing extensive training based on the most modern and communicative forms of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL). Accordingly, the curriculum of the programme consisted of general English - communicating in spoken and written English and methodology training - covering all aspects of teaching methodology. All participants were selected from Ganja schools by Ganja – Dashkasan Regional Education Department of the Ministry of Science and Education. The training schedule was also suggested by the same department and included six academic hours per day for five weeks. The classes were run in 10 groups with 12 teachers in each. The selected teachers went through placement tests at the start of the programme and Aptis tests upon completion to enable to measure their progress. Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli, bp's vice president for the Caspian region, communications and external affairs, said: “One of the objectives of this important programme was that the participants significantly improve their English language proficiency and move up at least one CEFR level over the course of the project. We are pleased to see the results – about 70% of the participants, who attended all classes, passed Aptis tests successfully, demonstrating excellent progress in their mastery of English. We believe this will substantially help to build strong English language teaching capacity in the schools of Ganja, Azerbaijan’s second largest city.” The total value of the project was around 261,000 AZN ($154,000). The project was implemented by the British Council office in Azerbaijan.