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Rob Fenn

Head of Human Rights and Democracy Department, FCO

Part of UK in Brunei

3rd April 2013 London, UK

“English as an ASEAN Language”- The Movie: Coming to a SEAMEO Centre near you!

Here are four ways to get the latest news about education in South East Asia.

  1. Ask SEAMEO, the regional Ministers of Education Organisation which the UK joined last week, as an Associate Member. We are deeply impressed by what SEAMEO has achieved over the last two years, under the active chairmanship of Brunei’s Minister of Education; and excited about what this network can do in the years ahead. I was lucky enough to be at the Council meeting in Hanoi, supporting the British Minister who launched our associate membership. In my home movie below, hear what David Jones, Secretary of State for Wales, said in our debut speech to SEAMEO; experience the “SEAMEO Song” (courtesy of a local primary school), and enjoy the very British music which our hosts supplied during the “family photograph”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3S0Iu6m5uE

  2. Read the blurb on the back of the professional film we distributed at the SEAMEO Council: “English as an ASEAN Language: The Brunei Story”. Made with the CfBT Education Trust, who have played a key role in the story for decades, it salutes Brunei’s success with English as a medium of learning, and draws some interesting conclusions about the best way to teach English in this region.
  3. Watch the film. It’s packed with examples of how to have fun learning English; and how to do so in a way which strengthens a nation’s distinct personality.
  4. Come to the Premiere in Brunei. With the Ministry of Education and CfBT, the British High Commission is planning a “Gala Night” for the first local screening. The principal guests will be those who produced and starred in the film, but we hope it will bring together the whole English teaching community here in Brunei, from MOE, CfBT and beyond. If you would like to be there too, please enter our Facebook competition. We will award tickets for the most thought-provoking answers to the following question: “What’s the best way to learn English?”

About Rob Fenn

Rob Fenn has been Head of the FCO’s Human Rights and Democracy Department since March 2014. His last formal responsibility for human rights was in the mid 1990s, when he…

Rob Fenn has been Head of the FCO’s Human Rights and Democracy Department
since March 2014. His last formal responsibility for human rights was in
the mid 1990s, when he served as UK Delegate on the Third Committee of
the General Assembly in New York (with annual excursions to what was
then the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva). Recent celebrations of
the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the post of UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights – a resolution he helped pilot through the
GA – came a shock. The intervening 20 years have flown: in Rome
(EU/Economics), in London (Southern European Department), in Nicosia
(Deputy High Commissioner) and latterly in Bandar Seri Begawan.
Rob,
Julia and their two sons loved Brunei, where British High Commissioners
are made especially welcome. The family’s activities included regular
walks in the pristine rainforest, expeditions upriver to help conserve
the Sultanate’s stunning biodiversity, and home movie making (in Brunei
it is almost impossible to take a bad photograph).
After
all those saturated colours, Rob worried that the move back to Britain
might feel like a shift into black and white. But the reunion with
family, friends and colleagues, and the boys’ brave reintegration into a
North London school, have been ample compensation. Julia’s main regret
is that, now she walks on Hampstead Heath, she no longer has an excuse
to carry a machete (“parang”).
Rob’s
problem is summed up in two types of reaction from friends outside the
office. On hearing that he is “in charge of human rights and democracy
at the FCO”, some think it sounds like a vast job: what else is there?
Others think it sounds wishy-washy: not in the national interest. Rob’s
mission is to take the Foreign Secretary’s dictum that “our values are
our interests”, and help his colleagues translate it into action in a
world so varied it can contain both Brunei’s clouded leopard and the
civil war in Syria.

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ASEAN CfBT english SEAMEO

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