PH expands education cooperation with Canada

CHED Commissioner Minella Alarcon (L) and CBIE President and CEO Karen McBride sign a Joint Statement on Education Cooperation.

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) recently signed at the Philippine Embassy in Ottawa an Action Plan on Education Cooperation with the Canadian Bureau on International Education (CBIE).

The signing ceremony capped year-long discussions on a formal partnership to facilitate institution-to-institution links, among other objectives.

CHED Commissioner Minella Alarcon and George Khoury, director for Membership of CBIE, finalized the Action Plan calling for two-way student and faculty exchanges, research collaboration between Philippine and Canadian universities, a dialogue on the recognition post-secondary credentials and related activities.

From 2015 to 2018, CHED and CBIE will work together to launch discipline-specific missions, foster faculty and student mobility, spur long-distance research collaboration, promote capacity building, and support the Philippines’ K-12/ Post-Secondary Transition Program.

The Action Plan comes on the heels of a CBIE-CHED Joint Statement, signed on Nov. 20, by Commissioner Alarcon and CBIE President and CEO Karen McBride, on the sidelines of the CBIE Annual Conference in Ottawa.

Evan P. Garcia, Undersecretary for Policy of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Petronila P.

Garcia, Philippine Ambassador to Canada, witnessed the signing of the Action Plan together with the Philippine delegation to the 2nd meeting of the Philippines-Canada Joint Commission for Bilateral Cooperation (JCBC).

“The CHED-CBIE took a very important step today in accelerating cooperation between Philippine and Canadian educational institutions by signing a Joint Statement and Action Plan.

Heretofore, people-to-people ties between the Philippines and Canada have been largely attributed to labor and immigration. We are certainly excited by the prospect of adding a new dimension to these human relations with the involvement of more students, teachers, researchers and education administrators. I thank CHED and CBIE for advancing our agenda on education cooperation,” Ambassador Garcia stated.