The British Council and the Commission on Higher Education signed three agreements last 2 August, which cover science and research, HEI capacity building and funding support and the alignment of Philippine credit transfer system with existing regional and international CTS.

In addition to these partnerships, the British Council and the South Manila Education Consortium (SMEC) signed an operational agreement to develop capacity of Philippine higher education leaders towards internationalisation.

Commentary by Pierre Pecson, Programme Officer for Student, Alumni, and Higher Education Partnerships

The education system in the Philippines is governed and regulated by three government agencies: (1) the Department of Education (DepEd) for basic education, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for higher education and (3) Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) for technical-vocational education. At the moment, the three bodies have their separate credit transfer systems, making transition and progression difficult, particularly between the Philippines and another country.

A series of workshops will be conducted in the Philippines by an expert from the UK in September. The project aims to harmonise the existing credit transfer systems in the Philippines, and develop and pilot the Philippine Credit Transfer System (PCTS) framework aligned with the ASEAN Credit Transfer System and other international systems such as the EU Credit Transfer System.

One of the other areas of collaboration with CHED is the joint development of niche programmes which entails capacity building and funding support for Philippine higher education institutions to develop programmes in partnership with UK universities. The agreement targets the development of up to ten niche programmes that remains unavailable locally despite being identified as critical for development. This includes transportation design, renewable energy studies, data science, tropical medicine and public health, and design engineering.

The partnership agreement on Newton Agham Programme, launched with CHED last year, extends the partnership for another year and will expand the programme to include PhD scholarships intended for ten qualified higher education faculty and HEI staff. This is part of CHED’s K to 12 transition programme to support higher education personnel affected by the multi-year low enrolment due to the implementation of senior high school this year.

The British Council also formalised its partnership with SMEC, a consortium of 12 higher education institutions, through an operational agreement on Leadership for Internationalisation Programme for University Presidents and Vice Presidents. This agreement aims to develop the skills of university executives and leaders on internationalisation to meet the demands of the changing higher education sector.

For enquiries, please contact Pierre Pecson at pierre.pecson@britishcouncil.org.ph