Forty six schools have appealed to the Department of Education (DepEd) to be included among those that will be covered by the pilot implementation of limited face-to-face classes set to start next month.
“Meron pong mga local government units na humihiling na sana masama din yung mga eskwelahan sa kanilang mga lugar dito sa pilot face-to-face (There are some local government units who are requesting for their schools be included in the pilot face-to-face),” DepEd Assistant Secretary Malcolm Garma said in a virtual press briefing on Oct. 19.
Garma said that DepEd will have to assess these schools first since they are not included in the list of schools initially approved by the Department of Health (DOH) for the pilot study.
Overall, there were 638 schools that were nominated by DepEd for the pilot study. These schools were selected from an initial list endorsed by the regions which was evaluated by the DOH Epidemiology Bureau (EB).
Garma explained that based on the granular risk assessment of schools conducted by the DOH EB, “there are 59 schools that passed the assessment as minimal or low risk” as of Oct. 2.
When DepEd issued a memorandum dated Oct. 5 to the concerned Regional Directors, they were instructed to conduct a quick validation of the 59 schools initially approved by the DOH EB.
However, based on the reports of the participating regions as of Oct. 13, Garma noted that “only 30 schools will be pushing through with the pilot implementation” of limited face-to-face classes when it officially starts on Nov. 15.
READ:
https://mb.com.ph/2021/10/19/only-30-schools-will-push-through-with-limited-pilot-face-to-face-classes-on-nov-15-so-far-deped/
Garma noted that based on further validation, there were a variety of reasons why some schools withdrew their participation such as consent from parents and the discretion of the LGUs.
Despite this, Garma noted that there are 46 schools from the participating regions appealing to join the pilot implementation of face-to-face classes.
Of this number, Garma said that only 29 schools are already part of the 638 schools. The remaining 17 schools were not nominated by their respective regions.
Given this, Garma said that “further validation will be conducted if these schools are included in the initial 638 nominated schools.”