A LIVERPOOL university is to train Tibetan teachers at the request of the Dalai Lama.
The unique relationship will see secondary teaching students train alongside trainee teachers at Hope University before finishing their course at a new university being set up by the Dalai Lama for exiled Tibetans in Bangalore, India.
The Daily Post can reveal the spiritual leader and his family were so impressed with work the university has being doing since the 80s with exiled Tibetans in North India that they requested Hope officials play a major role in establishing a school of education within the Dalai Lama Institute of Higher Education.
And if Hope’s blueprint for a one-year secondary teaching education programme is accepted, when it is submitted at the end of the month, Tibetan students could be studying alongside Liverpool trainee teachers within 12 months.
The university has been helping orphans in Tibetan Children’s Villages, in the Dharamsala region of north India, and the exiled Tibetan community at large since the 80s, largely through its overseas charity Global Hope.
This has included Hope staff and students working with Tibetan teachers on areas ranging from professional development to maths provision, and catering for pupils with special educational needs.
Dean of Education Professor Bart McGettrick, and other Hope officials, have previously met with the spiritual leader.
Primary education facilities are well established over there, but now Hope officials have answered the Dalai Lama’s SOS call to address the void at secondary level and make it a “priority” at the new university, which is now taking shape and being personally overseen by his sister Jetsun Pema.
