SCHOOL closures have devastating consequences for children’s learning and wellbeing. The most vulnerable children and those unable to access remote learning are at an increased risk of never returning to the classroom, and even being forced into child marriage or child labor. According to latest data by UNESCO, more than 888 million children worldwide continue to face disruptions to their education due to full and partial school closures.
The majority of schoolchildren worldwide rely on their schools as a place where they can interact with their peers, seek support, access health and immunization services and a nutritious meal. The longer schools remain closed, the longer children are cut off from these critical elements of childhood.
But vaccine clinical trials on younger children are just getting started. Vaccine developers overseas are still trying to assess the safety of their shots on three age groups of children. They are also trying to ascertain the appropriate dosage for each age group. While some clinical trials on children aged 12 to 15 years old are underway, trials on those aged 5 to 11 years old are just kicking off. Trials on children under 5 years old will be the last to be carried out.
The Department of Education (DepEd) may start bracing for prolonged distance learning. The conservative estimate is that COVID-19 shots for Filipino children below 16 years old may not be available in the country until the summer of 2022.
So there is a high probability that we won’t have extensive face-to-face classes in the school year 2021-2022. President Rodrigo Duterte himself has repeatedly said that he will not allow large-scale face-to-face classes in public and private elementary and high schools until a vaccine becomes available.
So what should we do for the time being?
We would urge schools to improve and expand their delivery of online learning as well as modular and TV/radio-based instruction, with a view to preventing more dropouts and enrolling more students in the transition to the next school year.
Some 23 million students are enrolled in public and private elementary and high schools nationwide for the school year 2020-2021. This is down 4.7 million, or 17 percent, from the 27.7 million enrolled in 2019-2020.
The situation is difficult no doubt. With every day that goes by, children unable to access in-person schooling fall further and further behind, with the most marginalized paying the heaviest price.
