ARMM barrio schools to receive regular operation grants soon

COTABATO CITY -- All public schools in five southern provinces beset with peculiar peace and security issues are to regularly receive operation funds starting 2017, a regional official said Tuesday.John Magno, regional education secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said the Department of Education-ARMM will start providing next year all elementary and secondary schools under its jurisdiction with funds needed to sustain local education programs. Part and parcel of these programs is the propagation of `culture of peace' among school children, he said.

Congress has approved during deliberations early this month the proposed P40.5 billion budget of the ARMM government for 2017.
A big chunk of the region’s 2017 budget is allocated for salaries of personnel of more than 30 ARMM line agencies and support offices under the ministerial control of Regional Governor Mujiv Hataman.DepEd-ARMM has more than 26,000 teachers and about 3,000 non-teaching employees.The autonomous region has 2,167 elementary institutions and 309 secondary schools.Magno said Hataman is keen on providing funds to all public elementary and secondary schools next year in a bid to improve the quality of education the ARMM government extends for free to school children in hostile and underdeveloped areas.Teachers in the so impoverished Sulu island province, touted as the most dangerous area in the country, were elated with the promise of funding for their schools starting in 2017.The ARMM government has been extending socio-economic and other humanitarian interventions to far-flung areas in Sulu as part of an effort to help the province rise from grinding poverty and troubles blamed on the notorious Abu Sayyaf, which boasts of allegiance to the Independent State of Iraq and Syria.

The autonomous region covers Maguindanao and Lanao de Sur, which are both in mainland Mindanao, and the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi. Only central schools and national high schools receive maintenance and operating funds, causing some sort of marginalization of the education programs of schools that don’t get regular operating funds, Magno said.Magno said Hataman recognizes the need to fully maximize the education programs of DepEd-ARMM in support of the current Mindanao peace process of President Rodrigo Duterte. Schools are the best bulwarks of peace interventions needed to build communities of peace-loving and God-fearing people, he said.Magno, an industrial psychologist, said the ARMM government also wants to make use of schools as venues for propagation of interfaith unity among the Muslim, Christian and Lumad communities in the autonomous region. With quality education, one that is accessible to all, no way can religious extremism and Islamic militancy prosper in far-flung areas in ARMM, Magno said.