More chaos if DepEd and ChEd open classes unprepared as DOLE and DoTr

The labor group Partido Manggagawa (PM) expressed fear that the August opening of classes can be more chaotic if the Department of Education (DepEd) comes unprepared as the Department of Transportation (DoTr) and Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).

The start of General Community Quarantine (GCQ) regime was marred by chaos and confusion yesterday when DoTr implemented a mad experiment of denying safe and adequate mass transport system for thousands of workers who are called back to work by their employers. DOLE for its part failed to make provision of shuttle services mandatory to employers.

The group lambasted the government for the chaotic Monday that exposed thousands of workers to health and occupational hazards while those who failed to report to work were denied the much-needed income.

“Naniniwala kami sa kapasidad ni Sec. Liling Briones na ihanda ang pasukan pero kung ang hambog na si Tugade kung saan bilib na bilib ang Pangulo ay lumagapak sa malaking kapalpakan sa unang araw ng pasukan ng manggagawa, magiging delikado rin sa mga bata kung ang DepEd ay hindi masusuportahan ng maayos ng iba pang mga ahensya ng pamahalaan,” said PM Secretary General Judy Ann Miranda.

Miranda said the government may consider adjusting the calendar of School Year 2020 – 2021, now that the Senate is giving the President the power to adjust the school calendar.

“A new schedule will give the DepEd, teachers, parents and children more time to prepare for the blended modalities while the Department of Health (DoH) and health experts gather data and assess the impact of GCQ activities in the spread of Covid-19 virus,” explained Miranda.

The group presumes that a face-to-face mode will remain the dominant learning modality in schools as online and other distant learning modalities will be challenged by digital divide and readiness issues both for the public and private schools. If that becomes the norm, a multitude of workers and students out in the streets will make the GCQ regime more chaotic and unsafe.

“Mas nakaka-terrorize and ganyang sitwasyon kaysa sa kinatatakutang terorismo ng estado sa minamadaling anti-terror law,” added Miranda, referring to the proposed stronger version of anti-terrorism law that is being certified as urgent by President Duterte.

Partido Manggagawa also called on the government to come to the rescue of private schools to avoid mass layoffs of teaching and non-teaching personnel whose jobs and wages are dependent on the number of enrollees. “The government must consider a stimulus plan for them,” said Miranda.

PM received reports that teachers in many private schools will face reduced teaching loads while those in danger of shutting down has already started with their termination procedures.

2 June 2020

Open classes when truly safe, other modalities must be made universally accessible

Photo from NY Times

With the country’s PCR-based mass testing capacity not even available to all our workers, opening our schools this coming August is not only unsafe for our children but will also be very costly when alternative learning modalities are applied. The case of infected South Korean students and our own poor pandemic response raise many red flags on this issue.  

First, on mass testing. Without the vaccine and our mass testing capacity stuck at minimal level, sending their children to school is a choice which is exceedingly difficult to decide for poor families who cannot even get free mass testing and adequate subsidies to secure their own health and economic survival at home. On the other hand, not enrolling when schools officially open in August places unnecessary pressure on both parents and students whose dreams of getting out of the poverty trap the soonest time possible through education remain high despite the pandemic.

Second, on transportation. The government did not even make provisions of shuttle services for their employees mandatory to all employers. Students from poor families rely on public transport and we see them battered daily by the violence of our mass transportation system. Adjusting to the new and reduced capacity of our mass transport system will further expose children and their mothers to more hazards. On the other hand, requiring them to be shuttled by service vehicles which rates are more expensive is too much of a burden for parents whose economic future are threatened by manifold crises due to this pandemic.

Third, on the physical setup. Our overcrowded schools need to be re-modelled first to ensure physical distancing and we have not yet seen any plan on how to do this in the remaining few weeks. Will it mean dividing the number of sections and classes and therefore extending the working hours of our teachers?

Fourth, on alternative learning modalities. E-learning or distance learning is a sound idea as long as the infrastructure for it is ready and universally accessible to all students of all classes, public and private. In fact, the time for distance learning has come several years earlier than the pandemic but it did only serve a privileged class of students enrolled in high end universities.  Private schools may continue to offer this mode for capable students but for public schools, a universal online modality remains a wishful thinking at this point in time. To our knowledge, even our premier state university, the University of the Philippines, did not make online classes mandatory during the lockdown period because not all UP students and teachers have gadgets and access to reliable internet.

This online class divide can only be resolved if the state will provide free internet services to all barangays and online gadgets are made affordable to all households. Unfortunately, our national broadband capacity embedded in the power transmission lines is now under the control of the Chinese-run National Grid Corporation of the Philippines. To maximize its free use for educational purposes, the transmission system has to be re-nationalized, notwithstanding many other issues supporting the argument for its renationalization.

Education as a social good must be made universally accessible to all, including the new and advance systems of learning modalities. Otherwise, without system and infrastructure reforms, Philippine education in times of pandemics will stay as a model itself of social inequality that infected this nation for over a century now.

25 May 2020