Averting a learning crisis
While it is evident that people forget the COVID-19 health protocols during political rallies, the education sector is tiptoeing and cautiously going back to the time-tested face-to-face classes.
For two years, online classes and flexible learning have become the general rule, while face-to-face classes are the exception with so many costly requirements.
Higher education institutions (HEIs) could attest to the long list of requirements to comply with limited face-to-face classes under the CHED-DOH Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) No. 2021-004. Although HEIs may continue to adopt flexible learning, certain courses or subjects cannot be taught effectively through flexible learning. For example, the gold standard for teaching laboratory subjects for medical courses and different fields of sciences is for students to study in an actual laboratory setting rather than watching videos of experiments being conducted.
Compliance with the CHED-DOH guidelines involves substantial money that schools need to shell out from their vanishing financial resources. While public schools can ask for funding from various public and private sources, private schools are left alone in terms of funding. Since private schools are institutions regulated by DepEd or CHED, they cannot pass on the hefty compliance costs to the students without approval from the regulators.
On March 18 this year, CHED issued supplemental guidelines for the operations of limited face-to-face classes in areas under Alert Level 1. The policies are more lenient, but the minimum public health standards remain and the requirements for HEIs to spend for retrofitting facilities and other conditions.
The pandemic teaches us that other modes of learning are as effective as the traditional ones. But the conventional classroom setup can never be discarded since human interaction and the teaching of social skills are equally important in the learners’ wholistic development. Rather than simply making sure that schools follow the minimum public health standards, the government must level the playing field and promote inclusivity and complementarity for public and private educational institutions. In this manner, we can prevent an impending learning crisis.