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 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.
