THREE public elementary schools in Tawi-tawi have begun the pilot implementation of limited face-to-face classes, the Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education said.

These schools are the Provincial Housing Laboratory School in Bongao, Lt. Laja Idanan Elementary School in Sapa-Sapa; and the Corazon Abubakar Iran Memorial Center Elementary School in Tandubas.

PHLS Principal Jeba Jalim was happy that the validating team found her school compliant to SSAT and selected it to conduct the F2F classes.

“I have 1,044 enrollees and 56 teachers including me and my staff who are so excited to go back to school after two years of pandemic caused by Covid19,” Jalim said

“Modular distance learning is good but F2F class instruction is better,” she added.

Fatima Abubakar, Schools Division superintendent, said the schools have undergone validation from the MBHTE regional team and were found to have full compliance to School Safety Assessment Tools for the pilot study of physical classes.

“Actually, we have submitted six schools for validation – three priority and three alternates, however, only the three above-stated schools passed the screening and approval from the regional team,” Abubakar said.

“We were supposed to have started on February 14 together with Basilan but Tawi-Tawi was still on alert level 3 on that particular date,” she added.

The MBHTE regional office on February 17 ordered the Tawi-Tawi division to proceed with the in-person classes after the province’s alert level status was downgraded to 2.

Abubakar instructed other schools in the province to prepare for in-person classes.

“The heads should make their schools ready for this move and hopefully, for the new normal situation,” she said.