Chatteris Educational Foundation

History

The Chatteris Educational Foundation has been a registered non-profit organisation in Hong Kong for over ten years. Over the past ten years the Foundation's focus has been running a gap year programme that places school leavers and graduates aged 18-25 (mainly from the UK, Canada and the US) in primary and secondary schools throughout Hong Kong. The programme began in 1990 when Mrs. Evelyn Fergusson and Mrs. Margaret Kwee, now trustees of the Foundation, started working as volunteers, chatting in their spare time to a small number of Hong Kong students. As the importance of these chat sessions grew, so too did the reputation of the Foundation. Later that year, the Chatteris Educational Foundation was established.

The Foundation’s work soon spread to more and more schools across Hong Kong wanting native English-speakers to help provide new opportunities for their students. Eventually demand became too great and the original volunteers were unable to give the time commitment that the schools wanted and needed.

In 1994 Gap Activity Projects was contacted in the UK and recruited several eighteen year-old school leavers for the Foundation’s programmes in Hong Kong. These pioneer students, the first English Language Teaching Assistants (ELTAs), were shared among several schools. As more educational institutions realised the potential of having their students interact with young native English speakers, the scope of the programme rapidly increased leading to today’s Chatteris Schools Programme. In the academic year 2002-2003 there were 80 ELTAs working in Hong Kong schools.

Between 1995 and 1999 Chatteris was sponsored by the Language Fund of the Hong Kong Government. From 1999 until 2003 sponsorship was provided by the Quality Education Fund. Since 2003 Chatteris funding has come from schools participating in the programme and from the Chatteris Fund.

In 2003, with school's demands and expectations changing, Chatteris established a range of other services for schools including consultancy, English Enhancement Programmes, the English Language Environment Enrichment Programme and a new position - the Chatteris Graduate English Language Teaching Assistant (GELTA). GELTAs are recent graduates, either native speakers of English or with native-level English competence that retain all the excellent qualities of ELTAs but can work at a capacity similar to that of a Native-speaking English Teacher (NET) with support from Chatteris Project Managers and Consultants.

As a non-profit organization Chatteris is committed to development and implementation of programmes that allow us to make a direct and practical contribution to the local Hong Kong Community. Volunteers (both local and from native English speaking countries) give their time and effort without charge to work on the Chatteris Community Programme to benefit the local community in a variety of different ways. This includes the Chatteris Office Programme (started in 1994), the Social Welfare Department and Correctional Services Department programme (started in 1996), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Programme (started in 1998) and working with the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups.

From September 2006, under the new Chatteris International Graduate Programme, all applicants coming to teach in Hong Kong with Chatteris will be graduates who wish to develop personally and professionally within an international environment. They were originally called Graduate English Language Tutors (GELTs) but this has been changed, as of July 2007, to Chatteris Native-Speaking English Tutors (CNETs) . The former Chatteris English Development Programme for Schools has also been re-titled English Enhancement Programme for Schools.

Introduction <-- Previous

Next --> Chatteris Programmes Overview