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Friday, March 29, 2024

Robredo nixes return to school amid COVID-19

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Amid the threat of the highly transmissible and deadly Delta variant of COVID-19, Vice President Leni Robredo is not yet convinced students should be allowed to go back to school and attend face-to-face classes.

“At this point in time, I agree that classes are (to remain) closed. But for me, the past one-and-a-half years have been a missed opportunity. When there was still no Delta variant yet, there are many local government units all over the Philippines still without cases,” she said.

“In the past one-and-a-half years, if only we allowed them to go to school, many could have studied,” Robredo noted.

She raised fears that the existing educational system could lead to an intergenerational problem, especially among the poor who did not have the access to online school.

The Vice President said many students, particularly those from low-income families, could not attend online classes and learn.

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“If we can’t educate, especially the poor, those without access (to the internet), those from far-flung (areas), they will not learn (anything), even their children’s children will get affected,” she said.

This developed as the Department of Education said the Department of Health has announced that 120 schools were being planned for pilot face-to-face classes, subject to approval by President Rodrigo Duterte.

“This number, higher than the 100 we presented at Senate, was based on request by Education Secretary Leonor Briones for additional allocation for private schools, and DOH is agreeable to the addition of 20 private schools,” DepEd Undersecretary Nepo Malaluan said in a message to reporters.

He added that no private schools have been identified yet as part of the pilot test, and that the department “will disclose the process upon approval of the Joint DepEd-DOH guidelines.”

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