GearinG up for more educational endeavors

This year’s UK-Philippine Friendship Week is about education and charity. British Embassy Manila and British Alumni Association are supporting Paint. Share.Care, an art workshop, exhibit and auction with the Saturday Group of Artists who produced collaborative artworks with select students for the benefit of a supported community and social enterprise. This will encourage children to appreciate art and showcase the collaborative efforts of both children and seasoned artists while inculcating the values of sharing and caring to benefit chosen charitable organisations.

The British Alumni Association (BAA) is an organization of Filipinos who studied in the UK and have returned to the Philippines to contribute to the country’s development. BAA aims to strengthen linkages among those who studied in the UK and build a network for the exchange of information and expertise among them. In past years, they have been involved in the celebration of UK-Philippine friendship week organising activities that promote relations between the two countries. These included concerts, medical missions and initiatives that aim to raise funds for charities.

The UK remains as one of the world’s leading study destinations for international students, including Filipinos, for its world class education system that nurtures creative thinkers and equips students with skills to become global leaders. The UK is home to four of the world’s top 10 universities and has 1,000 years of extraordinary academic innovation leading the world in quality research. Thirty eight per cent of Nobel Prize winners who studied abroad did so in the UK. There are 19 British universities with a five-star teaching rating, more than any other country.

Among the education opportunities that the UK provides to Filipinos is the Chevening scholarship. This year, there are 27 Filipino Chevening scholars in the UK for one year of academic study. Chevening scholars return to the Philippines equipped with a British education, an international experience and they go on to make a difference in their respective fields.

The UK is also a global leader in transnational education (TNE) where educational courses are provided by institutions in one country to students in another. Recognising the UK’s reputation in TNE, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has partnered with British Council on ‘Joint Development of Niche Programmes through Philippines-United Kingdom Linkages.’ It aims to internationalise the quality of Philippine higher education by introducing TNE programmes on subject areas considered national priorities but remain unavailable locally. Unlike studying abroad, taking TNE programmes is a cost-effective way for Filipinos to earn a foreign qualification because students spend only a very small fraction of their study in the UK. This gives them the experience of studying in a foreign country without all the costs involved in a full-time programme overseas.