DAVAO CITY—The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm) has hired 765 new teachers for districts in Maguindanao, a follow-through to an earlier hiring of teachers for its southwestern island province of Sulu in January.
In a communication dispatch by the ARMM Bureau of Public Information on Tuesday, the region’s Department of Education (DepEd) disclosed it already signed on Monday the appointment and deployment orders for the newly hired teachers.
Some 435 new teachers were deployed to the first district and 330 were sent to the second district.
All of them attended the acceptance and mass oath-taking ceremony held in Cotabato City on Monday.
DepEd Regional Secretary Rasol Mitmug Jr. attested to the competency of the new teachers. Mitmug, who is also a lawyer, said the teachers passed a strict hiring process that includes Assessment and Competency Examination for Teachers in ARMM, an interview and a teaching demonstration.
“I want to be sure the hired teachers are all competent. And you are all here because you all passed the process,” ARMM Gov. Mujiv S. Hataman told the newly hired teachers. “We ask you that you teach well and we would give you what you also deserve.”
Mitmug has previously announced that the DepEd-ARMM was preparing the deployment orders of 2,458 teachers for the entire region, which ARMM officials hoped would be accomplished as soon as possible.
Also earlier in January, the DepEd-ARMM hired and deployed 192 public-school teachers in Sulu. In the deployment program that time, Hataman also brushed aside suspicion of favoritism in the hiring of teachers.
“Definitely no one knew you. You were appointed because you are competent, not because somebody talked to me or someone was close to me,” he said.
He also assured the new Sulu teachers that they were “assessed on equal footing to eliminate nepotism and ‘palakasan system’ [system of patronage] that reportedly beset the DepEd-ARMM’s hiring of new teachers in previous years.”
Instead, he said, “the challenge to you is how to help improve the status of basic education in the region by giving your full commitment to teaching and in nurturing the holistic development of students. Sulu has more than 500 public elementary and secondary schools in Sulu.
The ARMM is composed of nine divisions that include Maguindanao I and II, Marawi City, Lanao del Sur I and II, Lamitan City, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.