Islamabad, December 14, 2020: As COVID-19 has transformed the entire world systems, the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan and the British Council, Pakistan will hold a three-day virtual conference on December 15-17 to discuss the future of the higher education sector in the post-pandemic world.  

The conference entitled “Pakistan-UK Education Gateway: Rethinking and Reshaping a Resilient Higher Education System” will discuss key issues facing the sector in the ‘new’ normal, the role of leadership in building resilient HE systems, and lessons learnt from the pandemic. It will celebrate some of the concrete contributions that the Pak-UK Gateway programme has made so far.

Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mehmood, Chairman HEC Tariq Banuri, Executive Director HEC Dr. Shaista Sohail, British High Commissioner to Pakistan Christian Turner, Director Education, British Council, Nishat Riaz, Vice Chancellors, faculty, and students from both the UK and Pakistan will attend the conference.

The British Council in Pakistan and the HEC launched the Pak-UK Education Gateway in 2018, with an aim to enhance partnership between the higher education sectors of Pakistan and the UK. The key areas of collaboration under the joint programme include, innovative and collaborative research, higher education leadership, quality assurance and standard setting, distance learning, international mobility, transnational education, and community engagement.

In addition to bringing partners from the Pakistan and UK together to share best practices and lessons learnt during the pandemic and promote cooperation and partnerships between both countries, the recipients of the HEC-British Council joint Research Grants shall be announced along with the upcoming British Council Scholarship schemes for young women in Pakistan.

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