CITY OF MALOLOS, Bulacan, Jan. 26 (PIA) -- After being swept with floodwaters late last year, Bulacan will be built with about 2,000 new classrooms as Education Secretary Armin Luistro signed a memorandum of agreement with top officials here.
The Department of Education (DepEd) and the provincial government will fund the construction of 971 classrooms each, totaling to 1,942 new rooms for Bulacan which saw last September and October what old-timers here said was the worst flooding in decades.
Luistro said his 200 surprise visits to different public schools in the country revealed the poor condition of school facilities that impedes quality education.
“I have already seen it for myself that our teachers are dedicated and students really wanted to learn. We just need to bring them classrooms and facilities,” he said.
Speaking in front of hundreds of school teachers and local officials in the Bulacan Capitol Gym, Luistro also called for cooperation among elected officials to set aside politics and unite to provide excellent education for the Bulakeños.
Governor Wilhelmino Alvarado said this move to build more classrooms will aid schools to adapt to the new K+12 education model of DepEd.
Under the K+12 curriculum, the country’s current 10-year basic education will be stretched to 12 years. Kindergarten would be mandatory to prepare the children in entering six years of elementary.
Then, there would be four years of junior high school (Grades 7 to 10) and two years of senior high school.
“Through this agreement, our youth could escape from the tyranny of poverty and ignorance because we could address the huge shortage in classrooms for our students,” said Alvarado in Filipino.
He added that Bulakeños are grateful to President Benigno Aquino, III for making the improvement possible in the province perennially visited by floods.
It could be recalled that typhoons Pedring and Quiel hit Bulacan last September and October with an estimated damage of P2 billion. District hospitals were slapped with P30 million damage, school buildings with P10 million and rural health units with P7 million. (CLJD/JMG/PIA-3)