The government’s task force leading the COVID-19 pandemic response has endorsed to President Rodrigo Duterte the expansion of limited in-person classes for several other college programs, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) said Thursday.
CHED Chairman Prospero de Vera said he asked the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to allow in-person classes for students taking up engineering, hotel and restaurant management, and maritime courses.
This, as the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is asking governments worldwide for the “phased reopening” of schools as soon as possible, citing the various effects of missing in-person classes on students.
Meanwhile, the Department of Education (DepEd) is calling on experts to submit their proposals in a bid to “strengthen” the agency’s basic education learning continuity plan (BE-LCP) to address the country’s quality of education.
DepEd said its policy research and development division had opened submissions of research proposals “to reinforce the link of research to education processes through utilization, dissemination, and advocacies.”
Education Secretary Leonor Briones said the research proposals “will help DepEd address pressing issues that we are encountering, especially in relation to the delivery of quality education.”
“The chosen proposal will be given a grant of up to P500,000, which will be distributed in 3 tranches, under the Basic Education Research Fund (BERF). The initiative aims to improve the policies, programs, and activities relevant to the implementation of the BE-LCP,” the statement read.
The research proposals, DepEd said, should carry the theme: “Supporting and Assessing Learning Continuity and Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education Materials and Development.”
In a report dated August 25, UNICEF Philippines said the country was one of the five in the world that have not started in-person classes since the beginning of the pandemic.
“While new variants are causing a rise of infections, UNICEF is advocating for a phased reopening of schools, beginning in low-risk areas. This can be done on a voluntary basis with proper safety protocols in place,” it said.
De Vera made the appeal after CHED discovered there was little COVID-19 infection among medical and allied health students, who were the first to be allowed to attend limited in-person classes.
“The IATF endorsed it already to the President,” De Vera said in a virtual press conference.
De Vera said the next batch that would be allowed to attend physical classes would be composed of programs that require “hands-on experience.”
Some 100 schools with medical and allied health courses have been allowed to hold face-to-face classes, De Vera said.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities shifted to flexible learning, where students study from their homes through a blend of online (virtual classes) and offline (modules and other printed materials) methods.
UNICEF Philippines Representative Oyunsaikhan Dendevnorov noted that schools globally were fully closed for an average of 79 teaching days in 2020, while those in the Philippines have been closed for more than a year.
“The associated consequences of school closures—learning loss, mental distress, missed vaccinations, and heightened risk of drop out, child labor, and child marriage—will be felt by many children, especially the youngest learners in critical development stages,” she said.
UNICEF cited that at least 29 percent of primary students across the world “are not being reached” despite efforts to provide remote learning.
In addition to lack of assets for remote learning, the youngest children may not be able to participate due to a lack of support using the technology, a poor learning environment, pressure to do household chores, or being forced to work.
“Studies have shown that positive school experiences during this transition period are a predictor of children’s future social, emotional, and educational outcomes. At the same time, children who fall behind in learning during the early years often stay behind for the remaining time they spend in school, and the gap widens over the years,” it said.
Campaigning for the resumption of in-person learning, UNICEF said governments must now start providing comprehensive recovery response for students by focusing on the three following key priorities:
– Targeted programs to bring all children and youth back in school where they can access tailored services to meet their learning, health, psychosocial well-being, and other needs;
– Effective remedial learning to help students catch up on lost learning; and
– Support for teachers to address learning losses and incorporate digital technology into their teaching.
“In the following weeks, UNICEF will continue to mobilize its partners and the public to prevent this education crisis from becoming an education catastrophe,” the organization said.
“Online and offline campaigns will rally world leaders, teachers, and parents around a common cause: reopen schools for in-person learning as soon as possible. The future of the world’s most vulnerable children is at stake,” it added.
In a forum on Aug. 13, Briones emphasized the need to teach children to read.
This year’s Brigada Eskwela will also focus on the importance of reading, she said.
“If it is possible to say 150 or 200 percent agree with the formula of reading, reading, reading,” according to Briones.
“Brigada Eskwela, as all of us know, is generally associated with cleaning up schools. We still clean up the schools in preparation for opening the school calendar. But this time, our Brigada Eskwela will be focusing more on reading,” she explained.
However, concerns have been raised by some education advocates that children are having a hard time shifting to Filipino or English from their mother tongue.
Under the mother tongue-based multilingual education of the K to 12 Law, learning materials for students from Kinder to Grade 3 should be in their native or regional language.
Filipino and English are gradually introduced once students enter Grades 4 to 6.
This developed as studies have shown that students learn other languages better if they are first taught in their mother tongue.
In a virtual presser Thursday, Education Undersecretary Diosdado San Antonio said his agency is “always willing to explore” the best way to implement the mother tongue-based multilingual education curriculum.
“I know and I recognize that the transition to the second and third languages is something that has to be done better. And while we have evidence to indicate that the mother tongue based-multilingual education, if implemented authentically, actually produces good results in terms of even the transition to the other languages, the evidence is not yet absolute,” he said.