Ms. Ethel Agnes Pascua-Valenzuela
Director, SEAMEO Secretariat, Bangkok, Thailand
Dr Ethel Agnes Pascua- Valenzuela is the director of the SEAMEO Secretariat,
which serves as the executive arm of the SEAMEO Council of Ministers from 11
member economies that make up SEAMEO. Dr Ethel Agnes P Valenzuela is the
18th Director of SEAMEO Secretariat and the first woman director since its
establishment in 1965. Since Dr Ethel Valenzuela joined the SEAMEO
Secretariat, she oversaw the implementation of SEAMEO College projects, SEA
PLM- the first regional assessment of grade 5 learners in reading, writing,
mathematics literacy as well as global citizenship, SEAMEO Centre Policy
Research Network (CPRN) and established the SEAMEO MOOCS Network.
At the global level, Dr Valenzuela is a member of the UNESCO SDG Global Steering Committee and CO-Chair of
ICT and Distance Education of the UNESCO Intl Teacher Task Force. She served as a board member of UNESCO
Global Education Monitoring (GEM), and currently a Technical Advisory Board member of the UNESCO Institute of
Lifelong learning (UIL) and the Chair of Technical Coordination Group of Education Expenditure of the UNESCO
Institute of Statistics (UIL) and a member of the Global Alliance for Monitoring Learning. She also is a technical
advisory panel of the Intl Standards Classification of Teacher Training Programmes (ISCED–T) of UNESCO and
UIS.
At the regional level, Dr Valenzuela seats as a member of the ASEAN TVET Council and an ex-officio member of
the ASEAN University Network. Presently she takes the lead in crafting the new SEAMEO Strategic Plan (SSP)
2021-2030 and the SEAMEO Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) 2021-2025. She revived the SEAMEO Journal
and served as editor of this regional SEAMEO publication.
When the pandemic broke in, she has introduced a wide range of COVID-19 responses of the organization
including the development and rolling off the SEAMEO COVID -19 Accessible and Responsive Education Support
Programme (CARES) Fund, SEAMEO Weekly Webinar Series, SEAMEO Border Schools Project and the SEAMEO
Master Class reaching over a million teachers and learners from Southeast Asia and Beyond. She applied for
SEAMEO’s membership in the UNESCO Global Education Coalition for COVID-19 Response and developed a
functional open educational resource (OERs) that member countries can access during the pandemic for free.
Prior to joining SEAMEO, Dr Valenzuela also served in the Philippines as Commissioner of UNESCO National
Commission (2003-2010) and played an integral role in the ratification of UNESCO Mutual Recognition of Higher
Education Degrees of Studies and Certificates (2003) of the Philippines. She also served as secretariat of the
1983 Regional Convention and served as UNESCO Bangkok consultant in the drafting of the TOKYO Convention
for the Recognition of Higher Education Qualifications (2011). She prepared the UNESCO Toolkit for the
Recognition of Higher Education Qualifications in 2015.
Her International career started when she was appointed as the first Chief Education Specialist at the
International Affairs Services of the Commission on Higher Education in 1995 and later on was promoted to be
the Director III of the International Affairs Services in 2000. IN 2003, she was promoted as Director IV of the
Office of Student Services opening more foreign scholarship opportunities for Filipino learners. She contributed
to the development of CHED policies standards and guidelines on international linkages, transnational education
and distance education as well as PSG on Student Services. To this date, she continued to serve CHED as a
Technical panel of expert for Transnational Education and Distance Education.
An accomplished academic and writer, Dr Valenzuela led and completed various regional researches such as:
ESD Toolkit in Southeast Asia; K to 12 Toolkit; Regional Comparison of K to 12 Systems in Southeast Asia;
Southeast Asia Teaching Competency Standards; UNESCO Education For All Assessment in the Philippines;
Multigrade Quality Indicators in Southeast Asia; Southeast Asian ECCE Standards; ECCE Teacher Competency
Framework for Southeast Asia; Multigrade Teaching in Southeast Asia; Philippine Higher Education Guide and
Philippine Higher Education in the International Encyclopedia of Education (Elsevier) to name a few.
With her passion for teaching, Dr Valenzuela also serves as Professorial Lecturer at the University of the
Philippines -Diliman College of Education since 2006. She also taught at DLSU Taft Graduate School and served
as also the first College of Education Chairperson at De LaSalle – Lipa.