Students in a class looking curious

We have been working in Sri Lanka since 1949, offering a wide range of services and activities across the island, through our offices in ColomboKandy and Jaffna and Partner Teaching Centres in Matara. We have over 25,000 library members, which is the largest membership in the British Council global network. We are committed to delivering improved services to our library membership and have recently opened a new state-of-the-art library in Colombo featuring the best of British literature. We also run one of the largest English language centres and examination operations in our network, which has over 100 offices worldwide. 

We work in partnership with a large number of public, private, non-profit and non-governmental organisations to deliver a portfolio of vibrant and impactful projects and are strongly committed to equal opportunity and diversity in all aspects of our work.

Our work focuses on four key areas – English, education and society, and the arts – and we work with three main groups of people. These include:

  • society and community leaders who can bring about changes in social, educational and cultural policy to increase our global connections, influencers including career professionals, the media, educators, artists, scientists and business leaders, who we partner with to help maximise the impact of their work and ours
  • young people, either in education or just starting out in their careers, who are opinion formers through their own social networks and potentially the next generation of national influencers and leaders.

See also