President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered on December 26, Saturday, educational institutions to refrain from conducting face-to-face classes given the emergence of new strains of COVID-19, said Sen. Bong Go.
In response to the President’s order, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said they will implement the president’s instructions to recall limited face-to-face classes in the light of recent development.
Earlier, Go reiterated his firm resolver with regards to the holding of pilot face-to-face classes in the country by January 2021 while there is still no approved safe and effective vaccine and amid the emergence of new strains of COVID-19.
He has consistently urged concerned authorities to reconsider such plan given the potential threat of COVID-19 and its new strains to the health and safety of the students, teaching staff and surrounding communities, without an approved vaccine to protect them.
“Sa Mayo, matatapos naman na ang klase (school year). Ba’t ‘di na lang natin antayin? Alam naman natin na marami pang nangyayari. Nakakabahala kung bubuksan pa natin ang klase (na face-to-face),” he said. .
The Department of Education had pushed for limited physical classes in low-risk areas in order to address the educational challenges confronting children from disadvantaged families and in rural areas.
Go has discussed the issue with President Duterte to reconsider the move and delay the pilot implementation until there is a safe and effective vaccine available and the country’s level of immunity is high enough to achieve herd immunity.
“With what is happening right now in other countries, let us study and visit the decision of DepEd,” said Go.
He said the President can talk and study a pilot implementation ng face-to-face classes.
Meanwhile, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers Philippines criticized as ‘a knee-jerk, passive response’ the President’s recall order on the conduct of limited face-to-face classes in January, citing that such move doesn’t answer safety, accessibility, and quality concerns in education amid the COVID-19 pandemic and its dangerous new variants. The group reiterates the need for the Duterte government to take proactive measures against the local spread of existing strains of the virus and the ‘equally pressing’ need to strengthen the education system to make it ‘pandemic-responsive.’
“Last night’s cabinet meeting exposed how ‘in-the-dark’ and ‘in-limbo’ the Duterte administration still is in terms of handling the pandemic, hence its knee-jerk responses of holding back the conduct of face-to-face classes as opposed to employing a scientifically guided risk assessment of where and when physical classes can be held in light of the discovery of new strains, of extending the ban on travelers from UK sans any other action plan, and of creating a new task force instead of replacing the generals in the IATF with medical and scientific experts. It’s eerily resonant of the last months of a bungled PH COVID-response, which led to the youth’s right to education and the people’s right to health being casualties to government ineptitude,” hit ACT Secretary General Raymond Basilio.
ACT urged the administration to ‘learn from their 9-month botched pandemic response’ and listen to the people’s long-standing demand for a comprehensive medical and socio-economic response to the crises. Instead of resorting to merely restrictive measures and passively waiting around for a vaccine, the group urges the government to aggressively strengthen the public health system and deliver social services as among the government’s primary and fundamental mandate.
“The Duterte government is yet again resorting to passive measures in dealing with this recent development and its impacts on education. As we’ve learned after the world’s longest lockdown, mere restrictions will not suffice in addressing a health crisis. The government must employ concrete actions to 1) combat the virus by bolstering public health; 2) curb its spread by installing preventive health measures; and 3) enabling the delivery of accessible quality education through ample resource provision. Otherwise, we’ll again be forced to choose between health and life, and our rights to services like education. But to that we say no more, these are our inviolable rights and the state’s constitutional mandate to uphold,” declared Basilio.
He explained that teachers see that the education system’s recovery from the pandemic should be geared towards the possible resumption of face-to-face classes—it being viewed by most as still the ‘most ideal’ delivery mode in formal education. The group pushed the government to take more serious actions towards this path, especially as the government’s ‘ill-equipped’ remote learning program failed to deliver on its promise to ensure learning continuity when the regime unsuccessfully got rid of COVID-19 before schools opened. He furthered that the risk of the new strains of COVID-19 should not derail initial steps towards closing the gaps in education delivery amid the pandemic. Instead, it should push the government to heed calls to guarantee health and safety in schools, maintain non-transmission in remote areas, provide ample tech infrastructure for remote learning, among others.
“Our demands stand, in the face of the old and new strains of COVID-19: fulfill the requisites for safe, accessible, and quality education to enable learning continuity without sacrificing the people’s welfare and rights. We demand these to be addressed now before things take a turn for the worse,” Basiilio said.