30 / 04 / 2009
London 30 April 2009 British Council Chair Lord Kinnock and Iraqi Prime Minister Noori Al-Maliki today announced a strengthening of educational links between the UK and Iraq, including scholarships for thousands of Iraqi students to study in the UK and £3 million of new funding to help the Government of Iraq develop greater capacity in Iraqi higher education institutions.
The £3 million of funding from DfID for a new Higher Education Partnership Programme follows the launch in January by Prime Minister Maliki of the Iraq Education Initiative: a scheme to reform the Iraqi education system, including the infrastructure and curriculum, which will also offer 10,000 foreign scholarships a year to Iraqi students.
Ahead of the Prime Minister’s visit, two of his key education advisors have spent this week in the UK on a fact finding mission. After seeing first hand the diversity and quality of Higher and Further Education institutions in the UK, they are recommending to Prime Minister Maliki that thousands of the annual scholarships be allocated to Iraqi students to study here. On Monday they met with Higher Education Minister David Lammy and Further Education Minister Siôn Simon and representatives of the British Universities Iraq Consortium and Universities UK. They later visited the University of Exeter, University College London and Southend Community College, who all welcome the announcement of Iraqi scholars to the UK.
Also at the meeting, Siôn Simon, who was in Baghdad for the launch of the Iraq Education Initiative in January, detailed to the Prime Minister the continuing support from the UK Government for the Rawabit Initiative linking UK and Iraqi colleges in support of the Iraqi National Strategy for Technical and Vocational Education.
Professor Rick Trainor, President of Universities UK, and Dr John Withrington, Chair of the British Universities Iraq Consortium, reaffirmed their support for Prime Minister Maliki’s Education Initiative and presented a draft report on how the UK and Iraq can build on the excellent work done so far and further increase educational collaboration.
Commenting on the meeting, Tony Reilly British Council Director Iraq said "The UK and Iraq have always enjoyed close educational ties. Prime Minister Maliki's new education initiative provides an opportunity to strengthen and deepen these ties with a new generation of young Iraqi students hungry for educational opportunities and international engagement."
Ends
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Notes to Editors
· There are currently 585 Iraqi students at UK universities, up from 125 in 2003.
· Since 2003 81 Iraqi scholars have taken part in the Chevening Scholarships scheme.
· Since 2003 15 Higher Education links have been created between UK and Iraqi Universities.
· The British Council has established six IT resource centres in universities in Baghdad, Basra, Babylon and Erbil.
· Since 2006 19 schools in Iraq have been linked with schools in the UK as part of our Connecting Classrooms project.
· We delivered a week long training programme for 40 supervisors from the Iraqi Ministry of Education on the latest development in English Language Teaching.
· And in March we held Iraq’s first IELTS test for 18 students in Baghdad and Erbil.
The British Council
Celebrating 75 years in 2009, the British Council is the UK’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations.
We work in over 100 countries worldwide to build engagement and trust for the UK through the exchange of knowledge and ideas between people.
We re-opened our office in Baghdad in 2003 after being forced to close in 1990. The office was originally established in 1952 and became the British Council’s largest office in the Middle East.
We work in the arts, education, science, sport and governance and last year we reached over 128 million people.
We are a non-political organisation which operates at arm’s length from government.
Our total turnover in 2007/8 was £565 million, of which our grant-in-aid from the British government was £197 million.
