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The National Covid-19 Task Force was asked to prioritize public school teachers in the priority groups lined up for the vaccine launch, along with non-teaching staff and school administrators.
Justifying the measure, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, Arts and Culture, noted that giving teachers the anti-Covid-19 vaccine is “a crucial step to ensure the safety of school facilities and generate confidence in the gradual resumption of face-to-face classes “.
The senator said in a statement Wednesday that when the pandemic struck earlier this year, more than 900,000 teachers and non-teaching staff had been at the forefront to ensure the continuity of learning for more than 22 million students.
Gatchalian acknowledged that even as teachers were preparing for the implementation of distance learning, “they risked their health and safety by distributing learning materials” used by nearly 87 percent of public school students.
Earlier, Gatchalian stressed that reopening schools should be a priority to “prevent an exacerbation of the learning crisis that haunts the country,” citing global assessments in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018, the Trend Study. in International Mathematics and Science (TIMSS) 2019 and Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) 2019, all administered before the pandemic, which found that the country’s students lagged behind globally and were not proficient in competencies basic.
He recalled that a United Nations policy report in October identified suppressing the transmission of the virus as the most important step in accelerating the reopening of schools, and noted that recently, the United Nations Educational, Scientific Organization and Culture (UNESCO) called on governments to “treat teachers as front-line workers and give them priority access” to Covid-19 vaccines.
“Because teachers and school officials serve as the vanguard in ensuring students’ continuing education, it is only fair that they be counted among the first to receive the Covid-19 vaccine,” Gatchalian said, emphasizing that “this is an important step in ensuring the safety of students ”returning to schools.
