Students, parents and teachers, take note: The opening of classes in public schools for the new academic year has been moved to Oct. 5.
This was announced by Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Leonor Briones on Aug. 14 during an online briefing.
“As per the memorandum of the President, he has given approval to the recommendation of DepEd which I repeat, we submitted last August 8. Thus, we will now implement such a decision to defer school opening to October 5,” said Briones.
“This will be the final adjustment for the school opening,” added the secretary. This announcement comes ahead of the original rescheduled date which is Aug. 24, and after several senators proposed the further postponement of classes.
JUST IN: Malacanang defers opening of classes to October 5, 2020, as instructed by President Duterte. | @JMAurelioINQ pic.twitter.com/1aUs4SsSvV
— Inquirer (@inquirerdotnet) August 14, 2020
On Aug. 13, Senate Committee on Health and Demography chairperson Bong Go recommended moving the new school year’s opening to give everyone more time to prepare for the shift to a blended learning format. “Kung hindi pa handa, huwag nating pilitin. Magiging kawawa ang mga estudyante, kawawa ang mga teachers,” stated Go.
Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri also stated, “Kung nahihirapan pa ang ating mga estudyante at ang DepEd mag-conduct nang homeschooling then it might be better to postpone the opening to another month or possibly even on January.”
Last Aug. 11, DepEd was criticized after several typographical and grammatical errors were spotted on the questionnaires for DepEd TV’s first test broadcast. However, Briones said that these were due to errors during the digital encoding of learning materials and not from DepEd’s curriculum itself.
Earlier today, Education Undersecretary Diosdado San Antonio admitted that there is a backlog and said that only around half of the school division offices are halfway through the production of self-learning modules.
Header photo from Inquirer.net
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Writer: YANN MAGCAMIT
