MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education (DepEd) will provide public school teachers with a monthly data allocation for three months to support online activities related to the implementation of the blended learning setup.
Education Undersecretary for administration Alain Del Pascua said DepEd has started the procurement process of the connectivity load that will provide public school teachers with 30 to 35 gigabyte of data allocation per month for the next three months.
“We will begin to roll out maybe by next month. We will be asking our teachers to register in DepEd Commons so we can provide them with the load to their phones,” he said.
Pascua said the 35GB data allocation is adequate for the online teaching activities for one month, noting that 1GB of data can be used for eight hours of online webinars, downloading of materials and watching of educational videos, among others.
He said the unused data allocation will be rolled over, enabling the teachers to use the entire 100GB allocation for up to one year.
Undersecretary for Finance Annalyn Sevilla said there is a total budget allocation of P1.2 billion for the provision of connectivity load to teachers.
She added that the provision of procured data load would replace the initial plan to provide teachers P450 per month for three months as connectivity allowance.
It was unclear if the earlier proposal to provide senior high school students with P250 per month as connectivity allowance will still push through.
Pascua said there is also a proposal to give teachers with dedicated SIM cards that could utilize the data connection for school work as he noted that the DepEd is already in the process of procuring additional laptops for teachers, as well as walkie-talkies for areas without cellphone signals.
DepEd has also started acquiring satellite connectivity for last-mile schools or those in far-flung areas, added Pascua.