VICE President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte yesterday said the August 22 opening of the 2022-2023 school year is final amid calls by teachers for a postponement due to lingering fears about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Duterte also said the date of the school opening has been approved by President Marcos.
“Our school year, which will be from August 2022 to July 2023, has already been approved by the President,” Duterte said in response to the call of the Teachers Dignity Coalition to move the school opening to either September or October to give teachers and students more time to prepare for face-to-face classes.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers, meanwhile, questioned the readiness of the Education Department to ensure the safety of teachers and students amid the pandemic.
In DepEd Order No. 34 released last Tuesday, Duterte said school year 2022-2023 for public elementary and secondary schools will open on August 22 under the blended learning system and will transition to full face-to-face classes in November.
Duterte said her office is always willing to hear the opinion of stakeholders, including teachers, to ensure the safe opening of classes. She added schools can now safely open since health protocols have been in place for the last two years.
“The difference now is we know the health protocols by heart, we have vaccines and we have a lot of supply of it, and we have COVID-19 medicines,” Duterte said.
The DepEd earlier said it recognized the transition to face-to-face classes would bring about stress and challenges for students and would provide psychosocial support during the first week of the school year to protect the students’ socio-emotional well-being.
The DepEd stopped in-person classes in early 2020 due to the pandemic, with schools shifting to blended learning. The DepEd allowed the gradual resumption of face-to-face classes in late 2021.
As of June 16, 32,787 or 72.66 percent of public schools in the country have started conducting face-to-face classes while 1,063 private schools are implementing in-person classes, equivalent to only 8.60 percent of the total number.
PULSE SURVEY
Ninety-four percent of Filipinos agree that children should be allowed to attend face-to-face classes when schools open next month, a Pulse Asia survey said.
The survey, which was commissioned by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, was conducted from June 24 to 27 involving 1,200 respondents with a 2.8 percent margin of error.
Sixty-seven percent of the respondents “strongly agree” that children should be allowed to physically attend classes when the school year starts on August 22, while 27 percent “somewhat agree” for a total of 94 percent.
Four percent were undecided, while only two percent “disagree.”
Of those who agreed to the return of physical classes, 86 percent were from the National Capital, 94 percent from Luzon, and 97 percent from the Visayas and Mindanao.
Eighty-five percent of social classes A, B, and C agree to the return of face-to-face classes, while 96 percent from social class D and 92 percent from social class E agree.
A similar survey conducted by Pulse Asia in June 2021 showed 44 percent of the respondents think that children should be allowed to physically attend classes, and 23 percent “disagree.”
Gatchalian said the government should take the survey as “a signal” that the resumption of face-to-face classes should no longer be delayed after more than two years into the pandemic, adding the prolonged lack of physical classes “will only lead to deeper economic scars due to the alarming learning woes.”
To ensure the safety of students when they return to school, Gatchalian said the government should ramp up vaccination among children, noting the low vaccination rate among children aged five to 11 which stood at 3.6 million or 26 percent of the target 14 million as of July 7.
Based on information from the National Economic and Development Authority, Gatchalian said a year of school closures costs about P10.8 trillion in future productivity and wage losses over the next 40 years.
TEACHERS WEIGH IN
A militant teachers group agreed with the call of President Marcos for a review of the education curriculum to address the prevailing job mismatches but stressed that stakeholders, particularly teachers and students, should be consulted. It added that subjects removed from the curriculum should be brought back.
Alliance of Concerned Teachers chair Vladimer Quetua said there is a need to review the curriculum to ensure it is responsive to the needs of Filipinos and not of other countries.
“What part of the K to 12 program needs to be reviewed? It should be the entire curriculum since it is not responsive to the needs of Filipinos,” Quetua told GMA7 “Unang Balita.”
He cited as an example the track taken by senior high school under the K to 12 program where the emphasis is more to satisfy the market-driven economy rather than agriculture.
“We are an agricultural country and yet there are more strands for the corporate world, what we call the market-driven economy,” he said.
The DepEd said each student in senior high school can choose among three tracks or strands: Academic; Technical-Vocational-Livelihood; and Sports and Arts.
The Academic track includes three strands: Business, Accountancy, Management (BAM); Humanities, Education, Social Sciences (HESS); and Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM).
Quetua added the review should also cover bringing back subjects that were removed like Philippine History, Filipino Language, and Panitikan.
Philippine History was taught in first year high school until it was removed as a dedicated subject in 2014 after the introduction of the K-12 program.
The Commission on Higher Education removed Filipino and Panitikan from the General Education curriculum in colleges and universities through a memorandum order issued in 2013. — With Raymond Africa
