Back to school blues

Last August 22, 2022, over 21 million private and public students returned to school nationwide. They will attend blended learning before going to full in-person classes by November.

Many are excited to go back to school to meet their teachers and old friends. For teachers, the real challenge of work awaits them in the classroom. The parents are also happy because they will soon be relieved of modular teaching tasks.

But some are still apprehensive due to the ongoing threat of the COVID-19 variants and monkeypox. Reality check, however, some schools are not ready for physical classes after a series of natural calamities hit the country.

Typhoon Odette in the Visayas and the earthquake in Luzon damaged many school buildings. The Department of Education (DepEd) needs 91,000 classrooms for the incoming school year.

The department will implement class-shifting schedules and build temporary spaces to address the lack of classrooms in time for the opening of classes. With such interventions, the classroom shortage would go down to 40,000. But the figures are still high to affect the quality of education for millions of Filipino learners.

The agency is in a desperate call for help to resolve its perennial problems at the beginning of the school year. Thus the Local Government Units assisted schools in the Brigada Eskwela with the repair of school buildings through its School Education Funds. Many LGUs took action immediately, while others are impassive.

Also under the new normal, many teachers work hard around the clock without enough vacation breaks. Many are physically tired, mentally exhausted, and morally down. Those who can’t take the burden avail of early retirement and others resign. Some went abroad for a better opportunity and working environment. Nothing has been done to stop the brain drain as more and more Filipino educators move away from the county.

Another big challenge of the agency is how to restore learning loss due to the ineffective learning modality employed at the height of the pandemic. To address the big issue all schools are crafting a learning recovery plan to assess its needs and to provide immediate intervention.

The opening school year is a huge challenge and an acid test for the new DepEd Secretary to prove herself worthy to manage the biggest bureaucratic run agency of the government.