Thousands of Iraqi students to study in UK

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."

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For press enquiries and interview requests, please contact James Rowe at the British Council Press Office on 020 7389 4939 or email james.rowe@britishcouncil.org

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.

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