President Bongbong Marcos and Vice President Sara Duterte revealed that they are eyeing the full resumption of face to face classes in November.
“Inday Sara has announced that we have a plan for full face-to-face by November of this year. In September, we will start face-to-face schooling and that face-to-face will end in early November as 100 percent attendance is already ng mga bata,” Marcois said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
Marcos said Duterte announced the plan during their first cabinet meeting.
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Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan is urging Duterte to resume the physical classes if possible in August so that Filipino learners will not lag behind the country’s neighbors.
“What’s the cost to our economy, to our society, to our children, to the human capital vis-à-vis the cost of that risk of infection? … And it’s clear that our hospitals show that we can manage the risk at this point. And so there’s no reason why we should not open up the schools,” Balisacan said.
NEDA previously said that when students were unable to attend face-to-face classes, this would inflict P11 trillion in productivity losses across a 40-year period of a person’s working life span.
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“The cost of that scarring on human capital is not going to affect us now, but it’s going to affect the future of our children,” Balisacan said.
“When they join the labor market five to 10 years from now, they will not be as competitive as our neighbors, who have already opened up, and provided better access to. This pandemic has been so inequitable; it has exacerbated the inequality of opportunities in education. So we should reduce and address that inequality,” Balisacan added.
