The Commonwealth Scholarship & Fellowship Plan (CSFP) is a program whereby Commonwealth countries offer educational and training opportunities to each other’s citizens. Since its inception in 1959, over 25,000 Commonwealth citizens have held awards through the CSFP - many going on to reach the very highest levels of their profession. This program encourages high quality applicants from a wide range of backgrounds.

In particular, the Commonwealth Shared Scholarships (CSS) is a UK based program which represents a unique partnership between the UK government and British universities. In 2007, over 30 British universities offered to support the scholarships by contributing the stipend for the students from their own resources, or those which the university had been able to generate from elsewhere. Awards are for taught postgraduate courses. The aim of CSS is to assist students from developing Commonwealth countries, of excellent academic caliber who, for financial reasons, are unable to study in Britain and are outside the scope of other British Government Support Schemes, but would benefit from higher education in the United Kingdom, enabling them to contribute toward the development of their home countries. Awards made under the CSS scheme are jointly funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), as part of the British International Development program to developing countries, and participating institutions in the UK.

The CSS is now managed by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC) in the United Kingdom. This commission is responsible for Britain’s contribution to the CSFP. Whilst the majority of the awards granted here have been for conventional postgraduate study, the activities of the CSC also embrace a long standing program for university staff from developing countries to spend periods of time in the UK, for the purposes of career updating and skills enhancement.

The CSC has sought to extend this principle to other professions, through the creation of a Professional Fellowships Program, under which organizations based in the UK can either apply to host key professionals from developing countries within their own organizations or nominate candidates to work with other UK based organizations with which they have links.

To learn more about Commonwealth Scholarship opportunities

Please visit http://www.csfp-online.org/.

For more information, please email education@world-federation.org.