As public schools across the Philippines prepare to open in September, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has expressed concern that millions of Filipino children will spend another year missing out on many opportunities for optimum education. “The Philippines is one of the five countries in the world that have not started in-person classes since the pandemic began, affecting the right to learn of more than 27 million Filipino students,” it said, citing Bangladesh, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela as the four others. As of early August, when the Department of Education (DepEd) announced President Duterte’s decision to start school year 2021-2022 on Sept. 7 and end it on June 24, 2022, a total of 209 schooldays in adherence to Republic Act 7797, lengthening “the school calendar from 200 to no more than 220 class days,” face-to-face classes remain a remote possibility. To the Duterte administration, even as the national pandemic task force has approved in principle a presentation intended to convince the President to allow the holding of in-person classes in areas at low risk for COVID-19 infections and transmission, the health and safety of students and teachers remain paramount. Prior to the pandemic, the academic calendar would wrap up the school-year in March, resuming classes in June. As the country was put on complete lockdown last year, the reopening of classes, after a series of postponements, was moved to October, a first in history. We are in straits no less dire this year. Over a year into the pandemic, the Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) claims that, despite the adoption of many iterations of distance learning, the disruption has caused “massive learning losses.” Among the biggest impacts of the disruption in education, according to DepEd chief Leonor Briones, is the absence of face-to-face interactions. Prolonged absence in school will have serious implications on children, she said. Backed up by a World Bank report, the advocacy group PBEd has warned that prolonged school closures will be “disastrous,” both for the education system and the economy. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental body composed of 37 member countries, is just as concerned that the absence of traditional schooling will have a long-term impact. A study it sponsored suggests “that the students in grades 1-12 affected by the closures might expect some three percent lower income over their entire lifetimes. For nations, the lower long-term growth related to such losses might yield an average of 1.5 percent lower annual GDP for the remainder of the century.” This study has found that the economic loss will be more pronounced among students from less privileged backgrounds, whose families are less equipped to support out-of-school learning. The implication is that the sooner we can restart face-to-face classes, the higher our chances are at mitigating this potential disaster, especially in the Philippines, where more than 16 percent of the population is living below the poverty line. There is no question that health and safety remain the priority, especially since the children have yet to be vaccinated. But as students struggle to keep learning at home despite inadequate resources, their basic academic skills and aspirations being eroded by the lack of practice, as more and more students disengage from or lose motivation in a learning environment that is, at best, uncertain and, at worst, ineffective, we must also acknowledge how we must address the education crisis with equal urgency.