London: Mr. Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Planning, Development & Special Initiatives held a meeting with senior management of Strategic Partnerships Office (SPO) at the Cambridge University, UK. Dr Najeebullah Marwat Member – Science, Technology & ICT, Planning Commission of Pakistan also accompanied.
Ms. Hilary Perrott, Strategic Partnerships Manager briefed about the operations of SPO. She informed that Strategic oversight, coordination, developing long term partnerships with stakeholders, consultations, exploring funding opportunities are the main objectives of SPO. Cambridge had 400 co-publications over last 5 years with Pakistani universities and research institutions mainly covering women health, environment, energy and humanities.
The Minister was informed that Cambridge Trust works with HEC Pakistan and allocates co-funded 10 PhD spaces on 50 % funding basis that have been going unattended. Taking immediate notice, the Minister directed Chairman HEC telephonically to look into the issue and ensure that these opportunities are fully utilized.
Mr. Ahsan Iqbal stated that Pakistan intends to expand the faculty training program for public schools in order to further improve the standard of research and education for which partnership with Cambridge can be worked out. Pakistan welcomes joint collaboration in applied sciences including agriculture, climate change, technology base for industry, said the Minister.
The Minister emphasized on academia – industry linkages with Cambridge University in order to utilize research for development and economic uplift. He also proposed to establish a cross-cutting group of experts that can meet regularly for exchange of ideas and experiences.
Minister Planning said that Pakistan also want to align it’s education system with Western standards to support the underprivileged students coming from public sector institutions.
The Minister apprised that Pakistan UK Education Gateway is a bilateral initiative, funded jointly and equally by the Pakistan and UK governments, which aims to enhance partnership between the Higher Education sectors of the two countries. Key areas of collaboration under this umbrella framework are: innovative and collaborative research, higher education leadership, quality assurance and standard setting, distance learning, international mobility and transnational education. He informed that the gateway, in the first phase, facilitated partnerships between 160 Pakistani universities and 65 UK institutions, including 160 researches.
