The Department of Education (DepEd) will accept enrollees for the school year 2021 to 2022 until Sept. 30, hoping to surpass the number of enrollees during the previous school year.
Education Undersecretary Revsee Escobedo said that as classes opened Monday, there were already 24.6 million enrollees.
“We’re hoping to surpass the enrollment for school year 2020 – 2021 this month,” Escobedo said, adding that a memo would soon be issued on late enrollment.
The DepEd officially opened classes in public and private schools nationwide for the school year 2021 to 2022.
In her welcome speech, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said this year’s opening of classes is the second “in the time of COVID and a celebration of last school year’s success.”
Digital learning tools were developed as face-to-face classes remain suspended due to the threat of more transmissible coronavirus variants.
“We ended the School Year 2020-2021 in victory. Our tentative graduation figures indicated that 98.13 percent or 2,055,499 of 2,115,040 Grade 6 learners made it and our Grade 10 learners also did very well–96.9 percent or 1,881,817 out of 1,940,578 completed their studies,” Briones said.
Briones’ claim of victory comes as UNICEF warned of the ill effects of keeping students out of school. The Philippines today is one of only two countries that have not yet allowed students back into the classroom.
President Rodrigo Duterte, meanwhile, has yet to give his go signal even with a “positive reaction” to the proposal of Briones to hold limited face-to-face classes in pilot areas where the COVID-19 risk is low, the Palace said on Monday.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Duterte has yet to give his approval to push through with the pilot face-to-face classes, although his initial reluctance may change.
Citing Briones’ proposal, he said the DepEd is planning to hold a dry-run of limited in-person classes in some 150 schools in areas where there is low COVID-19 risk.
Duterte has repeatedly rejected DepEd proposals for pilot face-to-face classes due to concerns of more infectious variants of Covid-19.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) earlier urged governments worldwide to start the “phased reopening” of schools as soon as possible, saying prolonged school closures have an adverse impact on learners.
To date, the Philippines and Venezuela are the last two countries in the world where schools remain closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the school year 2020-2021 that opened in October 2020, DepEd conducted classes through online learning, modular learning, television and radio-based instruction, and blended learning. which is a combination of two or more methods of learning.
Senator Francis Tolentino on Monday said the government should allow face-to-face classes for post-graduate and law school students who are fully vaccinated.
Faculty members and other school officials and personnel must be fully vaccinated before allowing post-graduate institutions to resume their respective face-to- face classes, however.
In February, President Duterte, upon the recommendation of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), allowed the resumption of limited face-to- face classes for medical schools and other health science institutions.
The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) has also recommended a gradual resumption of face-to-face classes for academic year 2021-2022, noting that the current blended learning scheme has deeply affected the country’s quality of education.
During last week’s preliminary discussion for the proposed P5.024-trillion National Expenditure Program (NEP) for 2022, Socioeconomic Planning Sec. Karl Kendrick Chua told members of the Senate committee on finance that a year without face-to- face classes will result in a projected P11-trillion loss in productivity over the next 40 years.
Chua said a year without physical classes will have a permanent effect on students’ abilities, especially when they enter the labor sector after graduation.
As more than 24.6 million learners resume home-based learning at the opening of SY 2021-2022, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian reiterated the need to uphold the safety and welfare of the country’s teachers, non-teaching staff, and school officials amid the continuing threat of COVID-19.
While DepEd personnel who get infected with COVID-19 are covered by the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., Gatchalian said they still need to spend out of pocket before they are reimbursed by the state insurer.
He also reiterated the need to vaccinate both teachers and minors to ensure safety in the gradual reopening of schools, which should start with pilot testing in low-risk areas.
Earlier this year, Gatchalian called for the inclusion of teachers in the A4 priority list of the government’s COVID-19 vaccination program.
He now calls on the government to start the inoculation of minors aged 12-17.
The Education department has chosen Taguig as one of the pilot cities to open with in-person learning once this is allowed in the National Capital Region, the city’s mayor said Monday.
The DepEd made the decision after the city government hit the one million mark COVID-19 jabs administered in its vaccination rollout.
Mayor Lino Edgardo Cayetano said the city also continues to have the lowest fatality rate with a 308 or 0.78 percent record against 1.90 percent of NCR as of Sept. 11.
An opposition leader in the House of Representatives on Monday slammed Briones over her claims that the country’s education system is better under the Duterte administration.
“How can DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones say that the Philippine education system has improved when schools are closed, and both our teachers and students are suffering?” Assistant Minority Leader France Castro, nominee of ACT Teachers party-list group, said.
Castro said Briones “cannot claim victory” as long as schools are closed, and children cannot safely go back to face-to-face classes.
She added the Duterte administration failed to give a substantial salary increase to the country’s teachers.
“The Duterte administration cannot claim victory as long as it denies our teachers their demands for P1,500 monthly internet allowances, overtime pay, gadgets for the distance learning of both students and teachers, adequate and timely release of modules and as long as there are no concrete plans for the safe return of students to face-to-face classes,” she added.
The lawmaker also noted the results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 where the Philippines scored the lowest among 58 countries, proving that K to 12 did not enhance the quality of basic education in the country.
“How can we say that the PH education system is better under the Duterte administration if the Philippines also continues to fail to perform well in global assessments? There is still inadequate funding that starves the education sector of the requirements of personnel and for critical inputs in schools, degrades the quality of teaching and learning, and makes education more inaccessible,” Castro said.
“The DepEd under the Duterte administration keeps this up under the blended learning system. It’s no wonder that our students perform badly in 3Rs.”
“The longer the Duterte administration keeps its schools closed, learning loss among students only continues to worsen. Another year of modules for students without adequate guidance from their teachers will be another wasted year for the students, teachers, and parents,” Castro added.
Classrooms were silent Monday as millions of school children hunkered down at home for a second year of remote lessons that experts fear will worsen an educational crisis.
While nearly every country in the world has partially or fully reopened schools to in-person classes, the Philippines has kept them closed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the UN says.
President Duterte has so far rejected proposals for a pilot reopening of primary and secondary schools for fear children could catch COVID-19 and infect elderly relatives.
“I want to go to school,” 7-year-old Kylie Larrobis said, complaining she cannot read after a year of online kindergarten in the tiny slum apartment in Manila she shares with six people.
“I don’t know what a classroom looks like — I’ve never seen one.”
Larrobis, who enters first grade this year, cries in frustration when she cannot understand her online lessons, which she follows on a smartphone, said her mother, Jessielyn Genel.
Her misery is compounded by a ban on children playing outdoors.
“What is happening is not good,” said Genel, who opposed a return to in-person classes while the Delta variant ripped through the country.
A “blended learning” program involving online classes, printed materials and lessons broadcast on television and social media was launched last October.
It has been plagued with problems: most students in the Philippines don’t have a computer or internet at home.
More than 80 percent of parents are worried their children “are learning less”, said Isy Faingold, UNICEF’s education chief in the Philippines, citing a recent survey.
Around two-thirds of them support the reopening of classrooms in areas where virus transmission is low.
“Distance learning cannot replace in-person learning,” Faingold said.
“There was already a learning crisis before Covid… it’s going to be even worse.”
Fifteen-year-olds in the Philippines were at or near the bottom in reading, mathematics, and science, according to OECD data.
Most students attend public schools where large class sizes, outdated teaching methods, lack of investment in basic infrastructure such as toilets, and poverty have been blamed for youngsters lagging behind.
Enrollments fell to 26.9 million in the 2020 school year and were down a further 5 million days before lessons restarted Monday, according to official figures.
Faingold fears many students may never return.
“We hope in the next days the enrollments continue to accelerate,” Faingold said.
Remote learning is also taking a toll on children’s mental health and development.
“Long-term social isolation is closely related to loneliness and physiological illness in children,” said Rhodora Concepcion of the Philippine Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
“With the disruption of face-to-face learning and social interaction, regression in formerly mastered skills may be observed in children.” Petronilo Pacayra is worried about his sons, aged nine and 10. Like most children in the Philippines, they rely on the printed worksheets supplied by their school.
“Their reading skills really deteriorated,” the 64-year-old single parent said in the cramped and dimly-lit room they share. Pacayra helps them with their schoolwork in between doing odd jobs to make ends meet.
“I don’t like reading, I prefer to play with my mobile phone,” said his youngest child, nicknamed RJ, who is starting second grade.
Their school principal Josefina Almarez claimed “no children were left behind” in the first year of remote learning. But she admitted some “need special attention”.
Younger children were especially hurt by school closures, said
Faingold, describing the early years of schooling as “foundational”.
“If you don’t have a strong basis in numeracy and literacy it’s going to be very difficult to learn the other subjects that are part of the primary, secondary or even tertiary education,” he said.
University of the Philippines education professor Mercedes Arzadon said it was “ridiculous” to keep schools shut indefinitely when othercountries, including virus-ravaged Indonesia, had shown it was possible to reopen them safely.
“Our youth’s future and well-being are at stake, and so is national development,” Arzadon said in a statement.
An “optimistic scenario” was for schools in the Philippines to reopen next year, said Faingold.
But that could depend on the pace of vaccinations with only around 20 percent of the targeted population so far fully inoculated against Covid-19.
Moreover, children have not yet been included in the program.
Jessy Cabungcal, whose 7-year-old daughter is enrolled in a Manila private school and uses an iPad and desktop computer for online learning, agrees with Duterte’s decision to keep classrooms shut.
She explained: “You could see he is afraid because he cannot assure us that the children will not catch the virus.” With AFP
