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ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi called for enhancing bilateral collaboration between Pakistan and the United Kingdom to improve the quality and standards of higher education in the country.
Addressing an event on Pak-UK Education Gateway, the president said the UK had always been supporting Pakistan, particularly in the fields of education and health. He emphasized that improvement in the education sector would open up new avenues in the fields of health, agriculture, and Artificial Intelligence.
The Gateway Program aims to enhance partnership between the higher education sectors of Pakistan and the UK in areas of innovative and collaborative research, higher education leadership, quality assurance and standard-setting, distance learning, international mobility, and transnational education.
The program will support the ambitions set by the HEC in Vision 2025 which encompasses targets to increase gross higher education enrolment by 15 percent, PhD faculty by 40 percent, number of universities to 300, and a total enrolment to 7.1 million. President Alvi said the UK had been the first destination for Pakistanis to get an education and even currently there are around 6,000 Pakistani students were studying there.
The president also spoke high of the British Council’s previous initiative of Alif Ailan to promote STEM education in Pakistan. He appreciated the contributions of UK government towards the development of education sector of Pakistan.
He also lauded the British Council’s plan to spend around 10 million pounds in higher education under the Pak-UK Education Gateway initiative which would opennew avenues of learning for Pakistani youth. He said owing to the resource constraints, Pakistan could not spend the required funds in research sector and the UK’s cooperation would help fill the gap.
The president stressed the need for enhancing the number of graduates to meet the national and global demand for skilled professionals, particularly in the field of IT. “The market required millions of skilled people only for data analysis and strategy as in today’s era, everything had been linked with artificial intelligence.”
He also emphasised filling the gap between technological innovations and social decisionmakers to capitalise on the potential of Pakistan’s youth bulge. He also reiterated that the financial empowerment of women was not possible without good education and health.
In his address, Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood said British Council had been partnering with Pakistan even during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the Gateway was a commendable initiative for exponential growth in higher education and faculty exchange between the two countries. Mentioning the allocation of Rs123 billion for high education in the last budget and provision of scholarships to youth, the minister said the government was also focusing on skill development.
Chief Executive British Council Scott McDonald appreciated the remarkable achievements by the HEC under the Gateway program and said the education had always been a priority in the Pak-UK cooperation.
He said the bilateral cooperation under the Gateway initiative would reinvigorate the higher education sector in Pakistan while focusing on multiple subjects such as climate change, strategic development and others. He said the British Council stood ready to support Pakistan in the sector and would continue to collaborate further for the promotion of higher education in the country.
