Briones promises immediate action on complaints while classes open

JEEPNEY CLASS Cousins ​​Bea Joy Roxas (in uniform) and Elrich Joy Andres, attend their class online in a jeepney passenger taxi that also serves as their home at Tandang Sora in Quezon City. —NINO JESÚS ORBETA

MANILA, Philippines – Education Secretary Leonor Briones assured public school teachers and students Tuesday that her office was acting promptly on their complaints after some questioned her statement that the opening of classes was a “victory.” against COVID-19.

“These problems [during the opening of classes] are being taken care of immediately. What we still see as a challenge, of course, is connectivity, but blended learning offers other learning modalities if online learning is not feasible for them, ”Briones told a press conference.

When public schools reopened on Monday, teachers reported that, in some cases, the number of students dropped by nearly 50 percent by the end of the day due to connectivity issues.

Kris Navales, a teacher at General Roxas Elementary School in Quezon City, noted that the government could not declare victory if students were in trouble.

There were 46 students in her fourth grade class at the beginning of a synchronous online class using Google Meet, but at the end of the 8-11 am session, only 28 were present.

“It’s easy to say that you have distributed learning materials to the children, but as teachers, we are concerned about the child’s learning process, especially during this time. We hope that by the end of this week, teachers can guarantee a quality education for our students, ”Navales said in an interview.

Briones had suggested that teachers use other systems such as modular and radio-based instruction.

The Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan youth group said Briones’s victory “was the suffering of the students,” emphasizing that the education of millions of Filipino students was underfunded and exclusive.

“This is outrageous. This is disgusting. This is our education being shredded … If they refuse to take our calls, we will yell at them,” he said in a statement.

For the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), the Department of Education (DepEd) “[remained] blind to the realities of teachers, pupils and students ”, as he received“ disturbing ”reports about modules riddled with errors and without some pages.

ACT Secretary General Raymond Basilio also noted the late issuance of Departmental Order No. 30, which altered the school calendar in line with the postponement of classes.

“Apart from the ridiculously late broadcast of these, October 5 was supposed to be the beginning of the formal conduct of the classes, but reports from the field revealed that no such thing happened,” he said.

Basilio said this was mainly due to “the lack of availability of parts, or in some cases, modules of complete subjects, which forced teachers to propose alternative activities or rush the printing and classification of learning materials.”

Last week, DepEd reported that it still had about 134.4 million printed self-study modules that should be distributed to public schools across the country.

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