EDUCATION stakeholders welcome the overdue approval of the pilot run of limited face-to-face classes in 100 public schools and 20 private schools in low-risk areas. This is a significant step towards improving the delivery of education amid the pandemic, and is direly needed amid grave learning loss and inaccessibility of distance learning to the youth who mostly belong to impoverished families.
As per the initial guidelines released, public schools will need to pass a “readiness assessment” while private schools will be subjected to a joint validation of the Department of Education (DepEd) and Department of Health (DOH). Stakeholders demand for a science-based and evidence-based risk assessment for all the participating schools. These shall help determine the present condition and urgent needs for the safe conduct of in-classroom learning, which the government must immediately address.
The government should consider the following for all participating schools:
* Retrofit classrooms for safe limited face-to-face classes;
* Install health facilities such as adequate comfort rooms, hand-washing facilities, school clinic, and others;
* Hire health and sanitation personnel;
* Conduct health check and mass testing to all education workers and learners who will participate in in-classroom learning;
* Provide free medical supplies and personal protective equipment;
* Ensure safe mode of transportation;
* Implement health protocols such as reducing the class size to a maximum of 15 students, rotation of face-to-face class schedules, regular disinfection of school premises, practice of social distancing and wearing of face masks
Similarly, as these schools will implement blended modes of learning, the government must ensure that the needs of the different distance learning modalities employed in the locality are provided sufficiently and in a timely manner — the most basic and most widely used among these is the self-learning modules which should meet the standard of 1:1 student to module ratio.
DepEd must ensure that these needs are met in order for the two-month pilot run of limited face-to-face classes to be successful. The results will hopefully allow the government to complete its roadmap towards the eventual safe reopening of schools across the country, while it simultaneously improves its medical and socio-economic responses to the pandemic.
