The Bihar Language Initiative for Secondary Schools (BLISS), which has helped teachers improve their proficiency in the language and quality of imparting lessons to students, celebrated its fourth anniversary on Wednesday.

More than 40 teachers attended the programme to mark the British Council project's milestone, and shared their experiences.

"The project helped me improve my reading, learning, teaching and writing skills," said Rajni Kumari, a teacher at Shahid Ramanand Ram Govind Singh Senior Secondary School, Punpun. "BLISS has built up my self-confidence. Now, I prepare in advance what to teach my students and how to make the lessons more interactive and interesting."

Another teacher from Dhanarwa block, Nutan Sinha, said in the past four years, she has witnessed changes in her students' behaviour. "They now have a good grasp on English. During class, we interact in English on several issues."

BLISS aims to improve secondary-level teaching of English. The British Council runs it in partnership with the UK government's department for international development, the Bihar Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad, and the state education department.

Sujata Sen, director, east India, British Council, said: "With the Bihar government's support, we have been able to achieve all the milestones of the project. This initiative has helped improve the quality of teaching and raise the level of English proficiency among the teachers and students."

Michael Collony, the project director, said: "More than 200 teachers have gone through a foundation programme focusing on their language skills and communicative teaching methodologies."

At the event, deputy chief minister Tejaswi also launched "English in Education: Bihar Profile", an initiative to address research and information gaps in the language teaching sector.

"Skill-based education and vocational courses are the need of the hour," he said. "The government alone cannot generate so many jobs that each of the citizens can be guaranteed employment. This is where the private sector becomes important, and English becomes necessary."