Every year thousands of British students travel abroad under the British Council language assistantship programme. Former language assistants include former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, author J K Rowling, and BBC journalist Fiona Bruce. But now the scheme – funded by the Department for Education – has been suspended in England and Wales following budget cuts. The British Council announced that: "As the programme is funded by the DfE, it is subject to the current government review of all public spending and at this stage we are unable to open recruitment for English language assistant placements in 2011-12."
At the time of going to press, ALL has written to ministers to underline the importance of the scheme for outgoing students of languages. ALL Director Linda Parker stated: “ALL hopes that, when the Department for Education has completed its review of the fine details of education spending, it will look favourably on the future funding of the Language Assistants programme. This programme has been a fundamental part of the education and experience of hundreds of thousands of UK language teachers for over a century and its contribution to language teaching in the UK has been immense.”