An Act Establishing the Bangsamoro Science High School System, Providing Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes

This creates a Bangsamoro Science High School System: a secondary school offering scholarships to deserving Bangsamoro learners, admitted and trained under a curriculum designed to prepare them for careers in science and technology. Education is free to qualified learners.

The first campus goes to Parang, Maguindanao, with authority to add campuses elsewhere in the region later, all forming one System. Management sits with the Ministry of Science and Technology rather than the education ministry — an unusual placement, and a deliberate one, since the bill's declaration of policy leads with research and development, invention, innovation and their utilization.

The Board of Trustees runs to 11 or more: the science Minister as ex-officio chairperson, the education Minister as ex-officio vice-chairperson, the President of the Mindanao State University System, the campus director, the president of the alumni association, the president of the parents-teachers association, and one private sector representative each for higher education, education for the gifted, industry, agriculture, and new and emerging technologies. The private sector seats are staggered: of the first 5 appointments, 3 serve 4 years and 2 serve 2, and every appointment after that is a fixed 4-year term.

Below the Board, a Campus Director appointed by search for a fixed 6-year term, removable only for cause, and an Executive Committee of the director and the heads of department that screens and selects students, picks scholarship recipients, and develops the curriculum subject to the Board.

The money is ring-fenced. All revenues and donations go into a Bangsamoro Science High School Fund spent by the Board exclusively on this Act; legacies and gifts are tax-exempt and deductible for the donor; and the System itself is exempt from all taxes, fees, assessments and other charges of the Government.

One subject is written into the statute by name. Values education is defined as a subject aimed at strengthening the foundations of faith among learners as they are trained in science and technology, and Section 3 requires the System to integrate it as a way of strengthening the foundations of science education and faith together.

The declaration of policy is 3 sentences and makes a resourcing argument rather than an educational one: the Bangsamoro Government prioritizes research and development, invention, innovation and their utilization, along with education, training and services in science and technology, and maintains a comprehensive, adequate and integrated high school science education system tailored to the needs of learners in the Bangsamoro.

No explanatory note is attached to the filed copy. The measure is a cabinet bill filed on the first filing day of the Second Parliament.

The benchmark is the difference between this bill and the law it became. This version says the System "shall be at par with the standards of other science high schools in the country" — a general aspiration. BAA 40 pegs it explicitly to the Philippine Science High School, which is a specific, demanding and measurable commitment: the national campuses are among the hardest schools in the country to enter. Turning a comparison into a named standard is the single most consequential edit made to this measure.

The Board was restructured in the same direction. This bill gives the private sector 5 seats and seats the PTA president; the enacted act cut the private sector to 2, dropped the PTA seat, and added the Mufti of the Bangsamoro Darul Ifta’ and the chair of Parliament's science committee. The effect is to move the board away from stakeholder representation and toward oversight — a legislator to answer to, and a religious authority to sit alongside the values education mandate that this bill writes in but leaves entirely undefined in practice.

The act also picked up 2 provisions with no ancestor here: a gender equity and non-discrimination requirement aimed at disparities in science education, and feedback and grievance mechanisms for students, faculty and staff to report misconduct. A bill that is otherwise carefully drafted about corporate powers, tax exemptions and board terms says nothing about what happens to a student who is mistreated.

The placement under the science ministry is worth one more note. Putting a school system outside the education ministry means its budget competes with research programs rather than with other schools, and its head of agency is not the region's education authority. It is a defensible choice for a specialist institution, and it is the kind of choice that is easy to make at charter stage and hard to revisit.