Education has been one of the casualties of this lingering pandemic. Since schools shut down in March 2020—at that time, many thought the situation would revert to normal in a matter of weeks— difficulties have been observed in the way teachers taught and students learned.
No less than the World Bank said that the Philippines’ learning poverty—the share of 10-year-olds who cannot read nor understand a simple story—shot up to 90 percent in 2021. It was also revealed that remote learning in the Philippines covered just 20 percent of Filipino households with school children.
Gaps that had been existing long before COVID-19 became even more pronounced and complex. Learning poverty prior to the pandemic was already at 69.5 percent. And then, egregious mistakes in the learning modules were discovered, ranging from grammatical and factual errors to oppressive and downright ridiculous gender stereotypes.
That there appeared to be no certainty on when the virus would go away exacerbated the troubles of the blended learning system—going online, or for those without the means to do so, a modular method where printed lessons and exercises were brought to the students and then collected from them after a given period.
Now however there is reason to believe, barring another COVID surge or variant, that our students can picture themselves returning to their classrooms and physically interacting with their teachers and classmates.
This week we heard from the Department of Education saying it was now mapping out a recovery plan to address the gaps caused by the pandemic. It is a part of the agency’s post-pandemic efforts, said Secretary Leonor Briones.
“We have to ensure that our interventions are effective so that everyone can catch up and accelerate their learning,” Briones said.
Another education official said the recovery plan is anchored on “learning remediation and intervention, professional development, health, safety, and wellness.”
All these are never objectionable, except that the plan appears to be still in the future tense.
It is too late in the day for the education department to be mapping out its strategies on how to resume face-to-face instruction effectively.
We would also like to remind Madam Secretary that this is not a post-pandemic scenario. COVID-19 is still very much around. The health risks, as well as lessons learned during the past two years, must have already been factored into the agency’s decisions and plans.
With hardly any other option left, the education sector must act fast and disseminate the implementation of its so-called recovery plan to all schools in all corners of this archipelago. Teachers and school administrators should have enough time to ensure their tasks are performed as envisioned. They, too, have been personally affected by the pandemic and its economic and other consequences and may need some time to adjust to the resumption of face-to-face classes, even as trial runs were conducted late last year.
The education crisis will persist for a long-time after this. Our children had at least two years during which they were not able to learn and interact with others as necessary. We must catch up fast enough if we are to reach our pre-pandemic quality, which in itself is not ideal, much less achieve real development in how we mold the mind, the skills, and the values of our young.