Spike in ARMM school enrollment seen as refugees return home
COTABATO CITY, Philippines – More Maguindanao children are expected to attend classes in June because of the return to their respective villages of a large number of families displaced by fighting in 2008, officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said Wednesday.
Last year, 61,200 elementary pupils and high school students were enrolled in Maguindanao. This figure is expected to reach up to 80,000 when classes open in June, ARMM Education Secretary Baratucal Caudang said.
Caudang said they also projected similar increases in other conflict areas of the ARMM, which was why the regional government built additional classrooms.
He said region-wide, a total of 365 new classrooms were built in preparation for school year 2011-2012.
“In conflict-prone areas, school officials are more prepared even for ill effects of armed clashes, by providing a space inside school grounds for evacuees to raise makeshift tents so their children can continue attending classes,” Caudang said.
Caudang said that because violence between armed groups and government security forces has become frequent in the ARMM, they also introduced some innovations in the local education system.
“The innovative approaches include an accelerated program for elementary and high school students, as well as admission with work experience accreditation, and non-formal education for older individuals past the secondary level school age,” he said.
The 2005 Philippine Human Development Index showed that ARMM residents barely get any education. And officials blamed the cycle of violence in the region on that.
In Maguindanao, for example, the PHDI reported that only about 39.7 percent of adults have six years of basic education, as compared to the national average of 84 percent.
Maguindanao’s literacy rate that year was 66.27 percent, as against the national average of 92.3 percent.
ARMM Executive Secretary Naguib Sinarimbo said 20 more classrooms will be built in the coming days in conflict-areas of the ARMM to better serve children of families displaced by recent clashes.
He said priority in selection would be given to villages that still do not have a school building or those in which classrooms were destroyed by war.
Colonel Prudencio Asto, civil affairs officer of the 6th Infantry Division based in Awang, Maguindanao, said the military would also help build new schools in partnership with the regional government and civil society organizations.
Meanwhile, the ARMM government and the national government’s Department of Social Welfare and Development also launched another effort to help children go to school.
On Wednesday, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman signed an agreement with the ARMM government for a free birth registration project.
Soliman said the project would help ensure that Moro and indigenous children have the “passport to attend school.”
Birth certificates are among the requirements for enrolment in public schools.
But most Moro and lumad residents are known for not registering the birth of their children.
Caudang said the month-long campaign was expected to generate more kindergarten and grade-school enrollees.
“I hope we will not run out of classrooms with the expected increase of school first-timers,” he said. With a report from Charlie Señase, Inquirer Mindanao
