Face-to-face learning

The president recently stated that face-to-face learning is not possible. The pronouncement came at a time when most schools have already begun the new school year. On a normal year, schools begin in June, but this year that will not be the case because classes began in October of last year, months after the customary June start date.

More from the basic education, however, some parents in particular are pressing for a return to face-to-face instruction. And the uproar derives from their incapacity to educate while juggling household responsibilities or working on the one hand, and raising their children on the other. For the time being, however, due to the new COVID variant, such a transition to face-to-face schooling seems debatable.

Returning to traditional face-to-face classrooms, on the other hand, would waste 'investments in technology, teacher training, and facility retrofitting,' according to Chairman Prospero de Vera III of the Commission on Higher Education. As a result, the agency has already resolved that the flexible learning approach will continue in school year 2021 and beyond. Until recently, it was said that programs would be opened gradually.

The University of the Philippines, which has its own charter with constituent universities, will begin classes in September and is expected to maintain its online mode of teaching and learning.

Back to our basic education, the most recent study which is essentially a rehash of past reports concerning our schoolchildren's poor performance in reading, math, and science. As a result, low performance is exacerbated by the pandemic, which prevents students from having more face-to-face interactions with their teachers. And every time a report like this came out, stakeholders urge an immediate reform of the curriculum. Yes, curriculum is an essential component of the educational process. And now that DepEd has identified the most essential learning competencies, the key question is; how significant is the “most essential”?

Even our own teachers, according to a study done late last year, are unsure whether their students will learn under the present distance education system, prompting education specialists to raise concerns about an impending learning crisis. According to the poll's findings, 70.9% of teachers don’t believe or aren’t convinced that DepEd's distance learning competencies are being developed.

Aside from the curriculum, the DepEd will look into a number of other equally-important concerns. There is still a prevalent call to elevate the quality of teachers as well as the trainings that are provided for them to stay up with the rapidly changing needs. Teachers who are overloaded with not just their teaching responsibilities but also additional auxiliary responsibilities. The fact that reporting norms and mechanics change from year to year adds to their weight. These are just a handful of the numerous difficulties that the education sector faces on a regular basis.

We live each day in the midst of uncertainty, one day at a time. But, if we dig deeper, we have our experiences that serve as lessons, but we do not use them to better ourselves because we are either accustomed to the past or just lack forward thinking, and therefore we recycle the same issues and problems over and over. So, will we return to face-to-face learning to avoid falling into the abyss of a failing educational system, and if so, when? For the time being, we can't. The uncertainty of things is what we know and what we are all left with.