Education officials in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), backed by other government agencies in the region, are gearing up for the resumption of in-person classes next month.
“A series of meetings and consultations with various sectors in the region led to this decision for limited face-to-face (F2F) classes in selected pilot schools,” Minister Mohagher Iqbal of the Ministry of Basic, Higher, and Technical Education (MBHTE) – BARMM, said in an interview here Friday.
He said it took some seven months for school officials and administrators to come up with the decision.
“It is a shared responsibility. We are ready to implement the F2F classes,” he said.
On Thursday, representatives from various offices in the BARMM signed an Inter-Ministry Memorandum Circular (IMMC) for the limited F2F learning modality in the region.
The offices that inked the IMMC included the MBHTE-BARMM; the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government; the Ministry of Social Services and Development; and the Bangsamoro Planning and Development Authority.
Iqbal said the policy will support other BARMM ministries and the school division offices who patiently prepared to accept once the learners in their school classrooms under the new normal.
For the past two years, the MBHTE has been implementing distance learning modalities since the declaration of the pandemic.
Under the IMMC, the ministries will look into the coverage of Kinder to Grade 12 for the face-to-face learning modality pilot; the use of Adaptive Learning Modality (ALM) as a learning approach; and the inclusion of Islamic Studies and Arabic Language (ISAL) in the learning sessions.
Iqbal said the MBHTE and the schools’ division offices will implement strict health and safety protocols and other critical directives from the BARMM Inter-Agency Task Force on Covid-19 for the safety of the teachers, students, and their families.
Alfadhar Pajiji, MBHTE deputy minister and focal person for the F2F, said the public schools have undergone School Readiness Assessment and School Safety Assessment Tool as benchmarks for the final list of schools in the pilot of F2F classes.
The target date for the piloting of F2F classes will be on February 14, he said. (PNA)
Source: Philippines News Agency
