As Sri Lanka emerges from many years of conflict, education is receiving a lot of media interest and the Sri Lankan government and President have identified current challenges in education. Based on discussions with various stakeholders we see these as the key challenges:

• Education is under-resourced and understaffed
• Poor levels of English
• Falling end of school O and A level results
• Falling literacy rates
• Low levels of technology in schools
• University places for only approximately 10% of A-level school leavers
• Employers' federations complain of ill-equipped school leavers who require a lot of up-skilling

In December 2015, the British Council and the Ministry of Education (MoE) agreed to work together on TRANSFORM; a programme which will look into education reform. The initial activity under TRANSFORM will be iTESL which aims at improving Teacher Education in Sri Lanka.

The objectives of iTESL are

1. to work with the MoE
   a. to establish a National Authority to oversee Teacher Education to replace the existing fragmented model
   b. to develop a National Qualifications Framework for pre and in-service training
2. to evaluate the teacher training curriculum and revise it to meet the new NATE/NQF requirements incorporating strands of English, IT and core skills
3. to develop and deliver a training programme with support mechanisms for all pre-service and in-service teacher educators
4. to deliver leadership training to School Principals to lead the changes in approaches in their schools

We are trying to establish an evidence base from which the TRANSFORM project board will be able to identify what might work in Sri Lanka. In order to direct activities and ensure quality, context appropriate research, training and materials development we wish to engage a consultant to carry out a comparator study of already existing, successful models of Teacher Education provision in Asia with the aim of highlighting best practices and making recommendations for our project delivery.

The main tasks in the consultancy are to:

1. become familiar with iTESL by reading all current project documents and existing teacher training research to date
2. identify with reasons of 5 or 6 Asian countries at various stages on the development cline with project relevance to act as comparators
3. formulate the initial research questions with the British Council and the Ministry of Education and write the concept note for the study focusing on both pre-service and in-service teacher education. A new British Council approach to teacher education ie Teaching for Success, both the teacher framework and the Continuing Professional Development Framework for Teacher Educators, will be central to TRANSFORM. CPD and CPD systems should be included in the concept note. The research needs to cover what kind of CPD policy and approaches are used and work in different countries. 
4. agree the format of the study and carry out the study
5. liaise with  the Teacher Education Consultant working on the Sri Lanka baseline to ensure comparator study focuses on similar areas
6. report on the study by providing an overview of the target country Teacher Education provision including
           • Relevance to this project
           •   Examples of best practices
           • Recommendations
7. Prepare a report for the Ministry of Education and the British Council on the desk research findings