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COTABATO CITY (SDN) — An official of the Bangsamoro government has revealed that a “reshuffle” of division of school superintendents is being eyed at the Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education (MBHTE) in the near future.
The MBHTE is one of the 15 primary ministries of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). It is responsible for and runs the Bangsamoro education sector.
A highly reliable source who declined to be identified relayed this recently and exclusively to SDN – SciTech & Digital News.
The source did not give any particular reason for the reshuffle, which still needs fine tuning. But observers said it could be part of making division superintendents become familiar as well with teachers and students in other schools in the region.
He emphasized that the MBHTE has the power to implement the reshuffle as a normal course of its mandate, especially with the passage of the Bangsamoro Education Code (BEC).
Further, the source said the supposed reshuffle may include assigning division superintendents from a particular province to a school division in another province.
Previously, the Bangsamoro region had 11 divisions of schools, but this was reduced to 10 after the Supreme Court in September last month cut the island province of Sulu from the umbilical cord of the BARMM family. Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, a former chief negotiator of the Philippine government in the peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) authored the High Court’s decision.
The division of schools are Basilan (179 schools, 1,563 teachers), Lamitan City (55, 722), Cotabato City (44, 1,819), Lanao del Sur I (415, 4,119), Lanao del Sur II (392, 3,788), Marawi City (51, 1,167), Special Geographic Area or SGA (111, 1,208), Tawi-Tawi (263, 2,801), Maguindanao del Sur (336, 3,466), Maguindanao del Norte (314, 3,318), for a total of 2,160 schools. (Number of teaching personnel is based on figures as of December 2023.)
The total of BARMM schools and teaching personnel is less Sulu’s 447 schools and 4,027 teachers.
According to the BARMM website the autonomous region in School Year (SY) 2023-2024 has “1,119,391 students in primary education, 63,565 in secondary education, 55,172 in Madaris or Islamic education, and 20,195 in higher education.”
Bangsamoro Education Code of 2021 spells out MBHTE mandate
The MBHTE has been of the mind that “No Bangsamoro learner shall be left behind”, a testament to the Bangsamoro government’s key policy to provide quality education to as many learners as possible.
Note that the education code of the BARMM enacted in 2021 (Chapter 3, Section 21) authorizes the MBHTE “to establish, operate, and maintain Schools Division Offices (SDOs) for Basic and Madaris education in the Provinces of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi, the cities of Marawi, Lamitan, Cotabato and one to cover the Special Geographic Area (SGA) composed of the (63) barangays that joined the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region.”
Section 23, Chapter 3, spells out the “Authority of the Ministry Proper over Schools Division Offices”, which says, “The Minister shall exercise control and supervision over Division Offices within the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and such other powers necessary, appropriate or incidental in carrying out the implementation of basic, higher, technical, and Madaris education programs and projects in their respective area.”
The Bangsamoro region, established in 2018 by the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) to implement the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), is made up of the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, and Tawi-Tawi, the cities of Cotabato, Lamitan, and Marawi, as well as the SGA’s 63 barangays or villages that voted “Yes” in a plebiscite in February 2019 to be under the BARMM jurisdiction. With the recent plebiscite at SGA, the BARMM now has eight new municipalities as residents voted “Yes”.
According to the Philippine Atlas BARMM has 4,404,288 people (figure still includes Sulu). It has 116 municipalities (plus eight newly established under the SGA: Basilan, 11 municipalities; Lanao del Sur, 39; undivided Maguindanao, 36; Sulu, 19; and Tawi-Tawi, 11. Its component cities are Cotabato (the regional center and capital) in Maguindanao; Lamitan in Basilan; and Marawi in Lanao del Sur. — EKU (✓)