Welcome students displaced by Marawi conflict — DepEd
“There are a lot of children from Marawi who enrolled in different cities – in Iligan, Cagayan de Oro, Zamboanga, Cotabato and even here in Quezon City and in Manila,” Briones said during the school opening program at President Corazon C. Aquino High School in Baseco Compound in Manila. Philstar.com, File/Facebook.com/leonor.magtolisbriones
MANILA, Philippines - As classes in public schools started nationwide last Monday, Education Secretary Leonor Briones made an appeal to students and teachers to warmly welcome those who have transferred to their schools after fleeing the conflict in Marawi City.
“There are a lot of children from Marawi who enrolled in different cities – in Iligan, Cagayan de Oro, Zamboanga, Cotabato and even here in Quezon City and in Manila,” Briones said during the school opening program at President Corazon C. Aquino High School in Baseco Compound in Manila.
“Let us welcome all of them because it is our duty and it is our mandate to give education for all children of school age regardless of where you are from,” she added.
As of yesterday, the Department of Education (DepEd) said 1,391 students from Marawi City have enrolled in other public schools, mostly in the nearby cities of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro.
Briones said some 20,000 school-age children were displaced from Marawi following the armed conflict between the military and members of the Maute group.
The DepEd ordered schools to accept late enrollees, even those not from Marawi, until the end of the month.
Having experienced how to study in the mountains at the height of World War II, Briones also urged parents of students in Marawi not to allow their children to skip classes in the wake of the armed conflict in the city.
Briones, 76, recalled her harrowing experience as a toddler during the war when her mother, who was a teacher, taught children in the mountains, which gave her a sense that “everything is all right, and everything is going to be all right.”
“I strongly believe whatever is happening in our country, for as long as we continue teaching our children, we continue classes, we add to normalization,” she said in a briefing in Malacañang yesterday.
“We make the children feel that there is something that they can look forward to aside from violence, the stories that they hear from the grown-ups. For myself, I would hear of people beheaded, pregnant woman eviscerated and so on. I was very young then but I remember,” she added. – With Christina Mendez
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