Iligan Madrasah Grads Sit the Same Entrance Test and Get Sent Back a Year
Public universities in Northern Mindanao score Arabic-medium coursework as remedial, so madrasah graduates repeat English years while Tagalog-medium classmates enroll straight into their majors.
A madrasah graduate in Iligan can finish twelve years of schooling, pass the college entrance test, and still get told to start behind. Not because the score was low. Because the transcript is in the wrong language.
Public universities in Iligan and Cagayan de Oro read Arabic-medium credits as decorative. The fiqh, the tafsir, the years of instruction that happened in Arabic get filed under "non-recognized units." What counts is the English column, and if that column is thin, the student lands in remedial year, bridging courses, English proficiency modules, the whole stretch that pushes graduation out by two or three semesters.
The transcript decides before the student does
Meanwhile the kid from the public high school across town, taught in Tagalog and English, walks the same entrance exam and enrolls directly into first-year engineering or nursing. Same city, same test, same tuition. One starts the degree. One starts paying for a runway to the degree.
The Bangsamoro education system runs its own recognized madaris, and the region has spent years trying to get religious schooling counted as real schooling. On paper the K-12 framework leaves room for madrasah tracks. In the admissions office of a state university outside the Bangsamoro region, that room shrinks to whatever the registrar can slot into an English-heavy general education block.
English fluency is priced into the diploma
The extra year is not free. It is another two semesters of dorm rent in a city where a Maranao or Maguindanaon family already sent a child far from home. It is board and lodging, transport, and the quiet math of whether the younger siblings can still be sent to school if the eldest takes longer than planned.
Advocacy groups working on Bangsamoro education have flagged this for years: the medium of instruction functions as a gate, and the gate is set to English. A student who reasons cleanly in Arabic and Filipino gets read as underprepared because the reasoning did not happen in the language the transcript rewards.
The MTB-MLE debate at the elementary level got airtime. This is the same fight at the top of the ladder, where the cost of the wrong language column is measured in delayed licensure exams and a later paycheck.
The bridge year is a bill, not a favor
State universities describe the remedial track as support, a chance to catch up. Read it from the family's side and it is a semester fee the Tagalog-medium classmate never has to pay, charged for the crime of having been taught in Arabic.
The Bangsamoro parliament can recognize its own madaris all it wants. The recognition stops at the regional line. Cross into Iligan or Cagayan de Oro, both outside the Bangsamoro region despite sitting next to it, and the credits reset to zero.
Fix the crediting rules and the entrance exam still stands. The test does not need to change. The registrar's spreadsheet does, the one that reads twelve years of learning and only counts the parts written in English.
