DepEd TV, the official television-based instruction platform of the Department of Education (DepEd), has already reached 18 million school-aged viewers.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Dec. 29, DepEd cited the Kantar report released by the Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation (IBC-13) which stated that the majority of the 18 million viewers of its DepEd TV are from children aged two to 12 years old.

The analysis report, DepEd said, also showed that there is also an “exponential increase in viewership across audiences in all areas” nationwide.

Citing the same report, DepEd explained that the “same pattern was observed across all areas” --- regardless of whether it was urban or rural or whether the audience was in Luzon, Visayas, or Mindanao.

Following this development, Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones thanked DepEd’s partners and stakeholders “who are helping us to reach the majority of our learners” --- especially in the remote areas.

The said survey on DepEd TV, Briones said, “shows that millions of Filipino learners have continued with their education amid the threats of the pandemic.”

DepEd TV is the department’s television-based learning delivery that is broadcasted through the internet and TV stations across the country.

The state-owned broadcast network IBC-13 started airing DepEd TV episodes on Oct. 5, 2020.

Increasing viewership

As cited in the report, DepEd noted that in IBC-13, most viewers of DepEd TV are digital households --- especially in the rural areas of the country where modular distance learning and TV-based instruction are some of the primary learning deliveries.

Related to this, the agency said that the monthly reach of DepEd TV has increased to 60 percent in the 12 months beginning October 2020, over the same period in October 2019.

“With these new findings, the evidence of the success of the program is clear and further reinforces the proposal for DepEd TV to become a long-term strategy of the Department, to strengthen the resiliency of the education system beyond the COVID-19 pandemic,” DepEd Undersecretary for Administration Alain Del Pascua said.

DepEd noted that the data also showed that viewership in IBC-13 “grew at least 1,000 percent during the hours that DepEd TV started airing based on data from the same period in 2020 and 2019 when DepEd TV was not yet being broadcast.”

Given this, Pascua assured that DepEd TV will continue developing programs that are aligned to the Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELCS) “so that our teachers and learners will have more entertaining and educational resources.

Meanwhile, DepEd --- through the OUA and Information and Communications Technology Service (ICTS) --- is also planning to launch the DepEd TV History Channel to reinforce historical awareness of learners, teachers, and the public.