The Department of Education (DepEd) said enhanced blended learning will continue, following President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision to postpone limited face-to-face classes implementation in select areas amid the emergence of COVID-19 variants.
In a statement released June 23, DepEd said they will still prepare and improve quality education delivery and its support to learners and teachers amid the possible opening of schools when the situation improves.
“Our utmost priority is the safety of our 27 million learners and more than 840,000 teachers, and we will defer to the professional assessment of the Department of Health, the IATF [Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases], and the wisdom of the President in ensuring their protection,” the DepEd said.
“We will release the final school calendar for school year 2021-2022 once we get the final approval of the President. We are proposing that he choose among either August 23, 2021, September 6, 2021, or September 13, 2021,” it added.
Meanwhile, the department announced the renewal of around 1,700 provisional senior high school (SHS) teachers whose appointments are set to expire next month.
“The Department is grateful to the [Civil Service] Commission for considering and granting the appeal of DepEd to renew and extend the provisional appointments of these SHS teachers.
“This will further ensure [the] unhampered delivery of learning and continuous teaching services of our SHS provisional teachers to our learners,” DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones said. – Report from Kenneth Paciente/AG- jlo
