- Philippine School Bahrain, founded in 1991 by 28 Filipinos, has educated 25,000 OFW children over 30 years with a DepEd-certified K-12 curriculum.
- The school eases the “social cost” of migration by allowing OFW families to reunite in Bahrain while ensuring their children receive quality Philippine education.
- Accredited by PAASCU, it consistently excels in global academic contests and balances Philippine standards with Bahrain's local policies for staff and curriculum.
Filipinos are said to excel wherever they are in the globe. Not only overseas Filipino workers excel in their specific profession in Bahrain, but even the children of these workers whose impressionable minds are molded by the Philippine School Bahrain.
The school, the sole institution offering Philippine Department of Education-certified K-12 education to OFW children in the kingdom, has so far instructed 25,000 pupils for 30 years.
"We've always also wanted to assist not only the Filipinos, the other Filipinos in the kingdom, but also amongst ourselves so that we might be able to find a place for our own children. And that was the basis, the push", school chairman Reuel Castro explained during the Chairman's Report program anchored by Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) Secretary Dante Ang II.
Castro was one of the 28 Filipinos who founded the Philippine School Bahrain in 1991 with support from the Philippine Embassy and the Bahrain government. "But aside from that, I think the impulse of the 28 Filipinos is more on assisting the Filipinos who are in need of a good place for their children", he stated.
Castro, named Bagong Bayani by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) at some point in his illustrious career, said they were inspired to set up shop because children of migrant workers "have to wait for more than a year to get admission back then.
"And consequently, the Filipino parents who wanted to bring in their families to Bahrain had to delay the visit of their children until they are certain that their children will have space", he said. And there is the 'social cost' wherein the OFWs were pulled away from their families and had to leave the children in the care of relatives.
"And this social cost is so, shall I say, huge in the sense that even the children, once they get separated from the father or from the mother or from both parents, they grew up with nobody. So, they have to be taken care of by the grandmothers or the grandparents or by other members of family. And so in a way, by us having a Philippine school in Bahrain, it would encourage Filipinos who are qualified to bring in their families to actually take them in and let them live with them in Bahrain and enroll their children in a school which is Philippinecurriculum-based", Castro said.
This, he added, made the OFWs 'happier' and children 'more at ease, more relaxed'. The Philippine School Bahrain is the first overseas school accredited by the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities (Paascu).
It has always ranked better than many prestigious schools in Bahrain and elsewhere in national, regional, and international tests and competitions such as the Timss (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) and the World's Scholars Cup.
The school succeeded even as it had to reconcile having a Philippine education system with keeping up with the policies and guidelines of the kingdom. Included in these are getting the approval of the Bahraini government's stamp for teachers they recruit from the Philippines.
"The procedure, since it's out-of-the-norm evaluation of qualifications, requires a bit of time before they can finally give us the go-signal. And it is that there has to be given proper credit to the teachers' profession from their end also. All our instructors are from the Philippines, and they all have qualifications that are acceptable to the Philippine Department of Education", Castro explained.
Castro announced that the Philippine School Bahrain will persist in shaping young Filipino minds with a compassionate environment where respect, empathy, and a commitment to go beyond one's interests for the sake of others prevail.
