Being a member of the Council of Europe places Georgia in a culture and language-wise diverse environment. Thus, without knowing foreign languages, full integration and realization of one’s own potential is nearly impossible in this environment. That’s why enhancing foreign language teaching at Georgian schools is one of the top priorities in the MoES strategic plan. In this regard some changes have been introduced to the National Curriculum since 2011, namely teaching English as a first foreign language has been made obligatory from the 1-st grade, whereas the second foreign language is taught only from 5-th grade. The National Curriculum also considers the opportunity of teaching the third foreign language in educational institutions.

The system is facing certain challenges due to the above mentioned changes, namely, the current agenda includes improving pedagogical competencies and modern resources generation and application skills for teachers.

In response to the above mentioned challenges, a project was initiated by the MoES in 2010. A group of volunteers enrolled in the project visit Georgia annually. Volunteer teachers live with the host families and are employed in public schools of Georgia where they’re actively involved in school and community life via collaboration with local foreign language teachers and other community members. Through collaboration with foreign colleagues, local foreign language teachers improve their language competencies, search and process additional teaching materials based on students’ needs, get familiar and implement modern teaching methodologies. The volunteer teachers’ job entails 3 major dimensions:

• Collaboration with local foreign language teachers and contributing to improvement of their language competencies and professional development
• Enhancing the foreign language knowledge in students;
• Organizing intercultural, educational and creative activities (school clubs, summer camps, etc).

It is noteworthy that since 2012 the program has expanded and along with English language the Chinese language classes have been offered (Chinese language component is carried out within the framework of the memorandum signed by the Chinese Embassy and the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, and the National Center for Teacher Professional Development).

Since September 2015, German-speaking and French-speaking teachers have had opportunity to participate in the pilot program. This initiative was conditioned by the fact that a large proportion of certain language teachers have not had opportunity of practical communication with native language-speaking counterparts, which is one of the most important factors for development of linguistic competence.

Program aims:

Promoting foreign language teaching and learning process by continuous professional development of teachers, introducing of a variety of teaching methods to the learning process and practical application of foreign language.

• Promoting of local foreign language teachers with continuous professional development, and developing of teachers' language competence, oral and general professional skills;
• Introduction of foreign language teaching methods, including the cooperative learning in schools;
• Increase students’ academic performance: improvement of writing, reading, communication skills and intercultural competence;
• Ensuring access to foreign language learning in the local community.