PAPERWORK, tons of it, is preventing majority of private schools from participating in the Department of Education’s drive to hold more face-to-face classes.
An official of the Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations yesterday said there is a need for the DepEd to lessen the bureaucratic paperwork that private schools need to comply with before they are allowed to participate in in-person learning.
“There should be a more efficient process. I hope we will no longer need to go through the division or regional officers since it just results to so many paper requirements,” lawyer Joseph Noel Estrada, managing director of the association, said in a radio interview.
Estrada said the required paperwork takes too much of their time and results in the delay in the approval of the application of private schools to return to face-to-face classes.
Estrada spoke after Education Secretary Leonor Briones said they are concerned with the small number of private schools participating in the resumption of in-person classes as COVID cases continue to decline.
“Seven hundred fifteen private schools are participating in face-to-face classes. It’s an issue that we are looking into since schools in areas under Alert Levels 1 and 2 are allowed to resume face-to-face classes,” Briones said during the Laging Handa public briefing yesterday, noting that there are more than 16,000 private institutions nationwide.
In contrast, more than 25,000 public schools have resumed some form of face-to-face classes.
Estrada said that for starters, private schools are required to submit an assessment form that would determine if they have complied with requirements to resume in-person learning. He said this needs to be submitted first to the DepEd division offices for endorsement to the regional offices.
The DepEd regional offices are nominating the schools in their respective jurisdictions to conduct face-to-face classes once they are assessed to have fully complied with the School Safety Assessment Tool developed in coordination with the Department of Health.
Estrada said they are also clarifying with DepEd if physical classes would be allowed to resume if not all students are vaccinated against COVID-19. He said this is because some parents or guardians are apprehensive about letting their children attend in-person classes if some of their classmates are not inoculated against the virus.
Another issue they want to clarify is what the DepEd would do if a student tests positive for the virus while attending face-to-face classes and who would shoulder the expenses for treatment.
Estrada, however, agreed with the DepEd’s view for the need to resume even a limited form of face-to-face classes, with online learning being used to complement it.
