ASEAN-UK Higher Education Week 2026 kicks off in Makati

MANILA — The ASEAN-UK Higher Education Week 2026, organized by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the British Council on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding advancing collaboration in the higher education sector.

According to CHED Chairperson Shirley Agrupis, the memorandum will uphold a benchmark on “how they can unify the quality assurance regardless of university status.”

“Our university-to-university partnership with the UK institution has long been there — longstanding. And more than 53 university-to-university partnership is already there. And with that partnership, we really saw the many strengths of UK education,” Agrupis told reporters.

CHED is expanding efforts for partnerships in transnational education after funding three so far, according to Agrupis.

“These are individual agreements between university to university, banking on the strength of each one. So for example, in health-related sciences, oh you are strong, so let’s partner through student mobility, faculty mobility, research collaboration. So far, CHED funded about three partnerships in a transnational education mode. So we are expanding this,” Agrupis said.

Agrupis added they are looking at aligning quality frameworks so credits earned in the UK education system are recognized in the Philippines and vice versa.

“So we will develop, first step, of course, is to align our quality framework so that there is a reciprocity, there is, I should say, mutual recognition of academic credits from one university to university. So ‘yun ang pinag-usapan namin kanina ditong cluster — higher education leaders kanina so that how can we be sure that those students graduating in the UK education system are accepted and recognized here in the Philippines and vice versa,” Agrupis said.

Also among those in attendance were UK Mission to ASEAN Ambassador Helen Fazey and British Council Philippines Country Director Lotus Postrado.

Fazey called the ASEAN one of the United Kingdom’s most important partners in higher education.

“ASEAN has long been one of the UK’s most important higher education partners. And some of UK’s most established international education partnerships can be found in this region… Here in the Philippines, it’s encouraging to see growing collaboration between the UK and Philippine institutions,“ Fazey said.