MANILA, Philippines — The Alliance of Concerned Teachers on Tuesday slammed a plan floated by the Department of Education to hold online classes for up to eight hours.
“Not only will an eight-hour class be extremely exhausting for both teachers and learners, thus direly impacting education quality—not to mention detrimental to their health—but it will also be inaccessible to more learners and even educators," the group's Secretary General Raymond Basilio said.
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According to the group, only a maximum six hours of teaching time can be required of teachers "while the remaining two hours is to be spent on other teaching-related activities."
"Any exigencies for longer instruction time shall be compensated with regular hourly rate plus a 25% premium on the same," ACT said.
Otherwise, the group claims teachers would be putting in overtime work for the rest of the school year.
"Our learners who themselves are struggling amid the pandemic will also be spent with classes and other learning exercises. We can almost guarantee that more students and teachers alike will drop out before the school year ends," Basilio said.
ACT urges DepED: Attune measures to 'harsh realities' of constituents
Education Undersecretary Jesus Mateo on Monday told ABS-CBN that DepEd was considering the idea of extending class hours to complete the required number of school days required by law.
“That means that instead of six hours, it can be extended to about seven [to] eight hours in a day just so we can extend the number of hours for the delivery of the minimum essential learning competencies,” Jesus said, referring to class hours per day.
In response, ACT urged the department to "do better by attuning [its] measures to harsh realities confronting its constituents."
The group further cited record-high joblessness recorded by the Social Weather Stations in July, saying this was a "a major factor to the success and sustainability of an already inaccessible remote learning modality for a 'technologically backward, third-world country like ours.'"
"How can families afford to sustain such long hours of internet connectivity when more and more Filipinos are losing jobs? Even those who can once afford costly internet access may not be able to do so for very long. Either DepEd missed the global economic recession or they simply don’t care."
"After risking teachers’ safety in its failed bid to prepare the school opening and further delaying the youth’s enjoyment of their right to education, DepEd is now set to make us suffer the consequences of government ineptitude and abandonment of education by subjecting us to a physically, mentally, and financially draining eight-hour online class," the group said in response
"With the unrelenting health and economic crises, this is just inhumane of DepEd." — Bella Perez-Rubio