News story: UK/ Egyptian workshop on Higher Education

On 11 February leaders of universities across Egypt were invited to a workshop at the British Embassy in Cairo to share best practice on improving higher education, by giving university teachers the recognition they deserve for their work, and ensuring that students leave university with the skills they need for the modern job market.

The workshop, delivered by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the British Government’s Department for International Trade, was attended by Prof Dr Mohamed Salheen, Adviser to the Minister of Higher Education & Scientific Research, as well the British Ambassador to Egypt, John Casson, and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP, UK Trade Envoy to Egypt.

HEA is a UK-based organisation which works with ministries, universities and individual academics across the world to help them improve education standards. For teachers, this includes ensuring that systems are in place to recognise and reward good teaching. For students, it means ensuring that students stay in university, get thorough assessment and constructive feedback on their efforts during their studies, and leave university with the skills they need for the modern workplace.

British Ambassador John Casson said:

Giving young Egyptians the chance for world class education is at the heart of the UK’s partnership with Egypt. When you put together world class UK university expertise and Egypt’s best young talent and institutions there is no limit to what we can achieve together. Everywhere I go I am inspired by the talent and ambition of young Egyptians and this workshop is a fantastic opportunity to share ideas that will help teachers and students succeed in giving Egypt excellent universities and young peple with the skills to succeed in the modern world.

Ian Hall, HEA Partnership Development Manager, said:

We are delighted to have this opportunity to speak to senior university leaders in Egypt. While every country is different, we’ve seen that higher education providers across the globe face many of the same issues. We’ll be sharing lessons learned from the HEA’s work across the world, including from our projects in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman, and how these could be applied within an Egyptian context. Our aim is to promote teaching excellence and to enable student success. An important route to achieving student success is by motivating great teaching in higher education through the reward and recognition of those who deliver it. We’ve also decided to focus on student employability which is increasingly under scrutiny from governments and employers, quite apart from being critically important to students themselves. We want to highlight some of the work we have done to help institutions develop holistic strategies to supporting employability, particularly through curriculum design.