Students attend limited face-to-face classes at the Cebu City Central School. CDN Digital photo | Delta Letigio
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Department of Education in Central Visayas (DepEd-7) said that limited face-to-face (F2F) classes will still be implemented for School Year (SY) 2022-2023.
Although they are studying the full implementation of F2F classes, as of the developments now, this may not happen in the next school year yet.
“Di ta kasiguro sa panahon basin ang Alert Level kay mosaka. With that may nalang limited ang face-to-face naay days in between,” said Doctor Salustiano Jimenez, the director of DepEd-7.
The concern of implementing full F2F classes is that it may be difficult to handle the class size and the health protocols may be compromised.
During its initial implementation, parents of vaccinated learners asked DepEd to allow more students to go to physical classes.
Expansion
Jimenez said that it is possible to expand the number of learners returning to F2F, but it will not be for full implementation.
Based on the current standard, the class size is limited because of social distancing.
Each grade level may be limited to 25 students in each class depending on the size of the classroom.
“Daghang teachers nga gusto gyod nga daghan nag learners sa students. Pero ang ubang parents dili pa gyod so dili pinugsanay ang face-to-face. Naa ra gihapon ang modular, blended online,” said the director.
The DepEd-7 is also studying the possibility that the learners will go to the schools at least 3 to 4 days per week.
Private, hinterland schools
All public schools in Central Visayas are now implementing F2F classes but only 30 percent of private schools are doing so.
There are at least 1,019 private schools, but many of these closed down during the pandemic.
“Most of the private schools kay ongoing pud ilang pagprocess sa face-to-face classes. Daghan pud nga naigo pa Odette,” said Jimenez.
As for schools in the hinterlands, Jimenez said there is a bigger chance for them to be granted full F2F implementation, especially for schools whose number of learners is essentially low.
It would be easier for the hinterland schools to return to a full F2F setting because each class doesn’t have many learners anyway making it easier to implement the health protocols, the DepEd said.
Still as of now, the DepEd-7 will wait for the go signal of the national government to implement full F2F classes in selected schools. /rcg
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