15 September 2016 — A delegation from the Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) conducted a mission to France on September 05 to 09 to discuss student exchange programs and training opportunities for Filipino professors affected by the K to 12 transition program.

The Philippine delegation was headed by Commissioner Minella Alarcon and included Dr. Maria Luisa Soliven, President of Central Mindanao University; and Dr. Naila Beltran, Director for External Affairs and International Linkages of Cebu Normal University.

Commissioner Alarcon was also accompanied by Atty. Lily Freida Milla, Director of International Affairs; Ms. Luisa Valencia, Director of Administrative and Financial Management Affairs; and Mr. Karol Mark Yee, Program Director for the K to 12 Transition Project.

Their five-day mission was packed with meetings with officials from the French Ministry of National Education, Campus France – the agency in charge of promoting higher education in France, the n+i network which represents over 50 engineering schools in France, the UNESCO International Institute for Education Planning and the OECD. It also included study visits to the Catholic University of Lille and to the Sciences Po campus in Paris.

Aside from promoting student exchange programs and joint and dual degrees, the delegation used the mission to start discussions on the training of Philippine university professors in top French universities as early as 2017.

“With the implementation of Grades 11 and 12 or Senior High School in the Philippines, Philippine universities are going to be affected. The Philippine Government therefore intends to invest significantly in improving the quality of higher education by providing affected teachers with scholarships in the Philippines and abroad,” according to Commissioner Alarcon.

“This [the K to 12 program] is a once-in-a-generation reform which presents unprecedented opportunities to train university faculty and staff,” Mr. Yee added. “We have started discussions with Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. We are very excited to be having these discussions with France which has some of the best universities in the world.”

This mission was conducted within the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Philippines-France Cooperation in the area of Higher Education and Research, which was signed during the State Visit of French President François Hollande to the Philippines in February 2015. The MOU provides for increased academic mobility between the Philippines and France in various fields, such as climate change, prevention of natural hazards, health and research on emerging diseases and biotechnologies, among others. END