Schools have finally opened after more than two years of “distance learning” in the country that had one of the longest and strictest regime of lockdowns and quarantines.
The Philippines is one of the last countries in the world to resume full-time, face-to-face classes, after repeated warnings that the prolonged closure of classrooms throughout the archipelago has worsened the education crisis that had already been issue even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
With most classrooms shut down since March 2020, Filipino school children had to make do with some sort of distance learning modality. The fortunate ones who had access to digital devices and reliable internet connections held classes online while the majority of the nation’s poor made do with “learning modules” that their teachers prepared for them and their parents had to pick up and submit from their schools for more than two years.
For the primary levels, our educational system will have to deal with two-years-worth of socially-awkward pupils whose only idea of “classmate” is a talking tile on an electronic screen or an imaginary concept for those who were unable to go online. Let us wish those homeroom teachers the best of luck as they try to introduce the concept of a real classroom and make it as COVID-safe as possible at the same time.
There will be school drop offs and pickups, introduction to financial education via school allowance money, actual real life bullying, and for those of us who have been passing through school zones unimpeded for more than two years… the return of the flag ceremony.
The big question to be asked at this point is how ready the schools and its administrators are. Are there enough classrooms, desks, books and teachers? Are the country’s schools still stuck in quarantine facility mode and the kids and teachers who will take over this week just have to make do?
This is a country that was already enduring a classroom shortage before the pandemic, when stuffing as many as 50 kids into overcrowded classrooms was considered totally normal among school administrators. With overcrowded classrooms now supposedly impossible due to social distancing protocols, where will schools find the additional rooms if government failed to do any classroom and school facility build build building during the pandemic lull? Do we send kids out into the middle of the newly reblocked streets where most of the infrastructure budget went?
What happens if a school kid shows COVID symptoms or has close contacts with someone who shows symptoms? Will the entire classroom be locked down or do we just grin and bear it because losing two years was enough? How about teachers? Are there even enough substitute teachers available for the eventuality that schools experience a surge of cases? Or maybe we should just trust the vaccines, the country’s vaccination effort, and the concept of herd immunity so we can just focus on living as normally as possible by now?
With so much uncertainty and questionable preparations from all levels and stakeholders, let wish our students and the educational system the best of luck in these coming weeks. Hopefully, no outbreaks occur so we can all make that long-delayed transition to the current normal and we can all find that rhythm in our lives that we have lost for almost 3 years.
Our fading pandemic lifestyle had its benefits but it couldn’t last forever. As most parents have gone back to work and business, so do kids also have to go back to school. Now that the day has finally come, we can only wish that whoever was in charge made the effort to put better system in place, when campuses were empty and opportunity was rife.
It would be satisfying to see that the government officials responsible for something as education did something right during the pandemic. But given the way they dealt with it during the past two years of “distance learning”, we really cannot expect much. As the nation’s kids go back to school this week, we shall see what kind of post-pandemic educational system our leaders have prepared for us.
Hopefully the millions of Filipino kids who will still have to compete with their peers from all over the world don’t fall back that far behind. And if the past two years of “distance learning” did set them back, perhaps the new Education Secretary can find the most effective ways and means to put our country’s youth and education back on track.*
