The Department of Education (DepEd) may be left with no option but to continue to implement the enhanced blended learning following the decision of President Duterte to postpone the implementation of limited face-to-face (F to F) classes in low-risk areas.
“Our utmost priority is the safety of our 27 million learners and more than 840,000 teachers and we will defer to the professional assessment of the Department of Health [DOH], the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases [IATF], and the wisdom of the President in ensuring their protection,” a DepEd news statement issued on Wednesday read.
Nonetheless, the DepEd said, they will continue to prepare and improve the delivery of quality education “no matter what the circumstances will be in the coming months. While we remain optimistic to open schools when our situation improves, we are ready to fulfill our constitutional mandate in supporting our learners and teachers in any form of learning available.”
On Monday, Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones announced that some 300 schools across the country may conduct pilot limited F to F classes for school year (SY) 2021-2022. The original number was 1,900 schools as recommend by the regional directors of DepEd.
“After the assessment, this was trimmed down to 600 schools, and then further lessened to 300 schools,” Briones said.
Briones then added, however that the number would still change, “depending on the behavior of the Delta Covid-19 variant and Covid-19 will largely [have an impact] whether we will have extensive face-to-face or not.”
TDC lauds Duterte’s decision
The Teachers Dignity Coalition (TDC) lauded the decision of the President and they expect that the same learning system will be used in the entire country for school year 2021-2022.
“And thus, the same problems of inaccessibility of children to online platform, non-provision of gadgets for our teachers, lack of self-learning modules or its erroneous content and inability of many parents to facilitate the learning may again be encountered,” said Benjo Basas, TDC chairman.
Basas said that they are calling on the DepEd to prepare the system and “learn from the lessons of current school year before declaring the start of another.”
Final school calendar
The DepEd, on the other hand, said that the agency will release the final school calendar for SY 2021-2022 once they get the final approval of the President.
“We are proposing that he choose among either August 23, 2021, September 6, 2021, or September 13, 2021.”
“We are hopeful that our partners and stakeholders will come together once again in this endeavor and work with us to serve the interest of our Filipino learners,” it added.
Briones reiterated, however, that the proposed pilot F to F will not necessarily be implemented in all regions and that the schools must be assessed by the DOH and the IATF.
Read full article on BusinessMirror
