The very first Education UK Certificate for Agents training, for those agents working closely on UK Education promotion with British Council Burma, was held in October 2012.

Led by East Asia Agent Training Lead, Jamie Jin, this two-month web-based training course began with a face-to-face orientation session including information on course modules, learning outcomes and a ‘Burma Market Briefing’. Afterwards, the trainees were provided with support from a local course tutor through ad-hoc support meetings.

Three agents successfully passed the agent training exam held on 15th May:

• James (Aung Kyaw San), Crown Education (Distinction)
• Prin Chan, Shwe Moe Hein Co-op Education Services Ltd.
• Zay Yar Oo, Future Way Co., Ltd.

The details of the three agents will appear on the British Council Global Agent List. This list is accessible to UK HEI’s, students and parents around the world.

An award ceremony for the three agents took place on 17th May 2013 at the British Council Burma’s Library. This was followed by an information seminar on the Education UK Agent Training Course. To raise the profile of the three successful agents, local media and journalists were in attendance. Agents and the local course tutor were later interviewed by journalists and TV media, and to date coverage has been given in two TV broadcasts and three published articles mentions. We also received queries from interested agents immediately after the event.

This should serve as an inspiration for other agents to join the training based on their precedents’ success. A second training batch is tentatively planned to start in September 2013, and will this time be offered to the wider agent community.

With the Burma economy set to rapidly expand in coming years and foreign investment to skyrocket, human resource with internationally recognized qualifications and skill-sets valued by international business is needed more than ever. With the creation of attractive posts in new businesses and organizations comes a motivation for the people of Burma to take up globally recognized qualifications for their future investment. The market for UK Education has the potential to grow and UK HEIs will set their eyes on this emerging market; to support this demand, quality agents providing a professional quality counselling service are vital.

It is in British Council Burma’s interest to play an instrumental role in building the capacity of local UK Education agents, generating a level of competency that equals that of agents across the region.