FILE PHOTO: A teacher and her students learn together at the Pedro Cruz Elementary School in San Juan City as it reopened its face-to-face classes on Thursday, February 10, 2022. The school passed the DepED Schools Safety Assessment Tool (SSAT) which shows its readiness for the limited face-to-face learning modality. INQUIRER/GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE
MANILA, Philippines 鈥� Education Secretary Leonor Briones on Tuesday raised concern over the low number of private schools conducting face-to-face classes, saying it is still a challenge convincing them to revert to in-person mode of learning.
In the taped briefing with President Rodrigo Duterte, Briones said that only 676 out of about 16,000 private schools have started holding face-to-face classes, which translates to only 5.47%.
This is a far cry from the number of public schools conducting in-person classes, which is about 25,668 schools or 56.89% of the country鈥檚 total number of public schools.
鈥淭he challenge is 鈥榶ung private schools kasi, out of 16,000 private schools, we only听 have 676 doing face-to-face, in spite of the fact that they were quite active in demanding face-to-face,鈥� Briones said.
鈥淎ng private schools, decision nila 鈥榶un and so we are now aggressively endeavoring to convince them to open at this time,鈥� she added.
For his part, presidential adviser for COVID-19 response Vince Dizon said that upon consultation with private schools, he learned that some parents are still 鈥渜uite apprehensive鈥� about letting their children go back to face-to-face learning.
鈥淭here is some resistance from private schools to do face-to-face classes. Some parents in the private schools seem to be quite apprehensive about letting their children go back to school, which of course is the right of every parent,鈥� he said in the same briefing.
READ: DepEd: Over 10,000 schools OK鈥檇 to resume limited in-person classes听