China and the Philippines have brought an exchange program to teach English to Chinese. A discussion about the program was made by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte with China. Secretary of Education of the Philippines, Leonor Briones said that the discussion about the program has been running for the past three years on a limited scale. Both the countries want to accelerate the exchange program and almost 300 teachers in the Philippines have been trained with the Chinese language to teach English in China without any communication interruption.
Currently, Chinese officials are proposing to bring around 2,000 Filipino teachers in the country and give them salary for teaching English in China. The educational engagement is still required to scale up through effective planning and processing period. The final arrangement of the teachers will be clear and the Philippines government would look after the exchange program to not let the third parties manage it.
Leonor Briones said, “We prefer that this will be on a government-to-government basis, along with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration. Usually if you go through agents on either side, it will be a primary burden to the teachers. We need to work on the details, how teachers will be chosen, qualifications and how this will be implemented.”
In April, the second Belt and Road Forum was held in Beijing with an expectation to increase activities between the Philippines and China across different areas such as development assistance, anti-corruption, and education. Collaboration regarding education has become more effective among other activities discussed in the Belt and Road Forum.
