Policy makers, educators, researchers and development partners will be converging in Abuja, Nigeria, on Wednesday as the two-day Language in Education Conference 2025 takes off.

The conference, which is organised by the British Council, is aimed at addressing the vital question of how every learner, irrespective of language background, can enjoy equal opportunity to thrive.

Speaking on Tuesday at a media forum to announce the conference, the Country Director, British Council Nigeria, Donna McGowon, reiterated the nexus between culture and education and their power to change lives, foster understanding and build lasting connections, trust and prosperity among nations and people.

And this, she said, includes improving English language proficiency as well as administering different English language testing solutions.

She said, “So, the British Council’s Language and Education Conference 2025 brings together policy makers, educators, researchers and partners from across Africa, South Asia and the United Kingdom to explore how language can support inclusion and improve learning outcomes across education systems. And it builds on wider inclusion conferences and policy dialogues which we have hosted in Nigeria and the wider region for the past 10 years.”

With the theme, ‘Language, Education and Inclusion, Empowering Every Learner’, McGowon said this year’s conference has a particular focus on language, which is also part of the British Council’s broader commitment to inclusive evidence-based education that reflects local realities, government priorities and the aspirations of learners everywhere.
“It is a platform for shared learning and knowledge exchange.”

With Nigeria as one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, with over 500 languages, the organisers said the diversity of languages and cultures constitutes a rich context for innovation and inclusive teaching and learning.
“And we have convened this conference to foster collaboration, catalyse reforms and to reaffirm our collective resolve to make education truly inclusive.
“In Nigeria, the British Council is delighted to work with the Federal Ministry of Education as well as state governments, educational institutions and non-governmental organisations to strengthen the capacity of teachers and school leaders at both pre-service and in-service levels to develop their curricula in a way that is inclusive and transformational for lifelong learning,” she added.

Also speaking, the Director of English Programmes, Sub-Saharan Africa, Julian Parry, noted that Nigeria’s linguistic richness and educational ambitions make it a fitting home for the conference.

He said, “We train school leaders, teachers and work with community leaders to help overcome some of the challenges of having multiple different home languages in an English-medium education system.”

Parry added that at the heart of the dialogue is a shared belief that language is not just a tool for communication but also a bridge to inclusion, identity and opportunity.

Stressing that language has remained a barrier in many parts of the world, he assured that the conference will create an opportunity to share evidence, challenges and successes from a range of contexts for participants to exchange knowledge.

He said, “There would be discussion on the role of language in achieving inclusive and equitable quality education, where we will be joined by senior education officials from other countries and international development partners. This would be followed by plenary sessions from renowned experts on language and foundational learning and trans-languaging and trans-knowledge, achieving inclusive education in language-diverse settings and language across the curriculum.”

Parry added that this year’s theme reflects a growing recognition that language plays a role in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 — ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all.

He said, “It is a practical, pedagogical and policy concern. It is about what enables a child to understand their teacher, what helps a girl feel that school is a place where she belongs, what allows a learner with a disability to access the curriculum in a way that is meaningful. Language, in short, is a means to inclusion, not an end in itself.
“This is why we are so proud to be convening this dialogue here in Nigeria, a country whose linguistic diversity is both a challenge and a tremendous asset.
“But this is not just a Nigerian conversation. Over the next two days, we will hear from colleagues across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the UK, and we’ll explore how different countries are navigating complex transitions between local languages and English.
“We will examine how language policies are actually being implemented in classrooms, and we will learn from each other’s successes, setbacks and innovations. Our aim over the next two days is simple but ambitious.”

For Alice Mukesa, language also intersects with gender, disability, poverty and location, because they all have implications on what language one speaks, how one engages in classrooms with the language that the teachers use and what one is familiar with as a learner.
“For us, we take that as a centrality in how we are intentional in creating an inclusive learning environment.”

The Director of Programmes, British Council Nigeria, Mr Chikodi Onyemerela, in his presentation, added that the British Council’s work in inclusion in Nigeria dated back to 2015.

According to him, through the Connecting Classrooms programme the Council was able to develop inclusive pedagogy programmes which enable teachers to have the requisite skills and capacity to deliver classroom subjects, embedding inclusive practices.
“We have trained over 600 teachers across seven states in Nigeria on this inclusive pedagogy programme, and still count. We supported the Nigerian government, which we are indeed very proud to have done, in developing the national inclusive education policy.
“This inclusive education policy acts as a compass within the Nigerian education system to practicalise all good practices in inclusive education.

The first version of the policy was developed in 2018 and the revised version was produced and developed in 2024, and the British Council has been a core partner of the Ministry of Education of Nigeria in developing the necessary iterations of this inclusive education policy.”

Onyemerela stated that the annual conference has been running consistently for the past eight years.
“We are focusing on language as an inclusion issue because we believe strongly that there are dimensions of language that support inclusion. So, we support the Nigerian government in embedding inclusive practices in our curriculum, in our policy and in our pedagogical approaches.”

The British Council English and School Education teams across the world support governments to meet their ambitions through projects and programmes that focus on seven important areas, including teaching quality, English in education, language in foundational learning, life skills for young people, school leadership, girls’ education and crisis displacement and migration.