Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan

The Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan (CSFP) is an international programme under which Commonwealth governments offer scholarships and fellowships to citizens of other Commonwealth countries.

History

The plan was originally proposed by Canadian statesman Sidney Earle Smith in a speech in Montreal on September 1, 1958^[1] and was established in 1959, at the first Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) held in Oxford, UK. Since then, over 25,000 individuals have held awards, hosted by over twenty countries.^[2] The CSFP is one of the primary mechanisms of pan-Commonwealth exchange.

Organisation

There is no central body which manages the CSFP. Instead, participation is based on a series of bi-lateral arrangements between home and host countries. The participation of each country is organised by a national nominating agency, which is responsible for advertising awards applicable to their own country and making nominations to host countries.

In the United Kingdom, which is the biggest contributor to the Plan, this process is managed by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom, a non-departmental public body, and funded by the Department for International Development. Since 2008, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office no longer contributes financially to the plan [1] and the number and type of scholarships available for students from more developed Commonwealth countries (Australia, The Bahamas, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Cyprus, Malta, New Zealand, and Singapore) to study in the UK has been reduced.[2]. Other countries, such as Australia, no longer offer scholarships as part of the CFSP.[3]

Notable past Commonwealth Scholars and Fellows include

Politics

• Kenny Anthony, Prime Minister of St. Lucia
• Michael Cullen, Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand
• Ross Cranston, Member of Parliament for Dudley North, UK
• John Alexander Forrest, Member for Mallee, Australia
• Leslie Gunawardana, Former Minister of Science, Sri Lanka
• Juma Athuman Kapuya, Minister of Labour, Employment and Youth Development
• Kalombo Mwansa, Home Affairs Minister of Zambia
• Satendra Nandan, Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Fiji
• Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago
• Carlos Simons, Member, Interim Advisory Council, Turks and Caicos Islands
• Michael Tate, Minister for Justice, Australia

Judiciary

• Ross Cranston, Former Solicitor General of the UK
• George W. Kanyeihamba, Judge of the Supreme Court of Uganda

Government

• Michael Omolewa, Permanent Ambassador to UNESCO, Nigeria
• Dame Bridget Ogilvie, Diplomat
• Carolyn McMaster, Canadian Deputy High Commissioner to New Zealand

Business

• Ahseesh Advani, President and CEO, Virgin Money, USA
• Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada

Academia

• Saleem Badaat, Vice Chancellor, Rhodes University, South Africa
• Heather Bell, Director of International Strategy at the University of Oxford and an Official Fellow of Merton College, Oxford
• Robert M. Carter, Director of Australia's Secretariat for the Ocean Drilling Program
• Basudeb Chatterjee, Chairman, Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi
• Germaine Greer, Eminent author; Professor Emeritus of English Literature and Comparative Studies at the University of Warwick
• Charles Jago, President of the University of Northern British Columbia
• Will Kymlicka, Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy, Queen's University at Kingston
• Bridget Ogilvie, Director of the Wellcome Trust
• Pratapaditya Pal, Curator-Emeritus and formerly, Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Chittaranjan Panda, Curator and Secretary, Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta
• Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Professor of Art, Baroda University
• Lalji Singh, Director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad
• Cham Tao Soon, Founding President, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Sheung-Wai Tam, President Emeritus of The Open University of Hong Kong
• Stephen Toope, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of British Columbia
• Jeremy Waldron, Professor of law and philosophy, New York University School of Law
• Richard Alexander Arnold, Professor of English, Alfaisal University in Riyadh

Journalists

• Edward Greenspon, Editor-in-Chief, The Globe and Mail, Canada
• Charles Krauthammer, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist
• Chandan Mitra, Editor and Managing Director of The Pioneer, New Delhi

Performing Arts

• Walter Learning, Founder of Theatre New Brunswick
• Shyamaprasad, Leading Indian (Malayalam) film Director, President, Amrita Television

References

1. ^ E.A. Corbett, "Sidney Earle Smith", University of Toronto Press, 1961, pp 65-66
2. ^ About CSFP

External links

• CSFP website
• Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom website