The British Council in Saudi Arabia is working with the Ministry of Education to enhance education collaboration and identify partnership opportunities between the UK and Saudi universities with a focus on research & innovation and transnational education.

As many of you know, in March 2018, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia have reinforced their commitment to education by signing an education agreement and launching the UK-KSA Educational Partnership – a catalyst to enhance collaborations in higher education, scientific research, and innovation, and transnational education. This was further supported by the UK Government’s International Education Strategy update, identifying Saudi Arabia as the only Gulf priority country and emphasised the need for increased international cooperation and partnerships to support the recovery of the economy and drive growth.

In line with Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia has already taken transformative steps to increase investment opportunities and collaborations for local universities to grow competitively. Recent announcements from the Saudi Ministry of Education encourage Saudi universities to forge partnerships with international higher education institutions and international institutions to operate in Saudi Arabia.

In March 2021The British Council organised with the Ministry of Education the HE Leaders Roundtable and announced the launch of two working groups that will focus on Research & Innovation and TNE.

To encourage further partnerships, the Saudi Ministry of education has identified the following top five Saudi HEIs that are interested in holding discussions with their UK counterparts to identify the scope of collaboration and establish partnerships with UK HEIs in areas of mutual interest. Other Saudi institutions may be included in future announcements.

  1. Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh
  2. King Saud University, Riyadh
  3. King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah
  4. Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam
  5. Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh

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We invite UK institutions to share their expression of interest to engage in discussions with the Saudi HEIs to identify mutual areas of collaboration and to signing MoUs/agreements. The Ministry of Education will shortlist the UK HEIs interested,  in discussion with British Council. There is an opportunity for an announcement about the potential of these partnerships to be made in Oct during a visit of senior UK officials to Saudi Arabia.

Should your institution be interested, please complete the following https://bit.ly/UK-Saudi-partnerships by 20th Aug 2021 COB.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me