The regional offices of the Department of Education (DepEd) in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Region IV-A (Calabarzon) announced the suspension of classes in public schools amid the surge in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in the country.

In a regional memorandum issued by DepEd NCR on Friday, Jan. 14, schools division superintendents were informed that classes in public schools will be suspended from Jan. 15 to 22 to “ease the health burden caused by the surge of COVID-19 cases to the physical and mental well-being of the school personnel and learners.”

Classes in Metro Manila public schools will resume on Jan. 24 to 29 on “purely asynchronous learning modalities.”

For the duration of the suspension of classes, DepEd NCR said that is “expected that physical reporting of teachers will be not required by the school heads.”

Meanwhile, DepEd said the mid-year break scheduled on Jan. 31 to Feb. 5 “shall be utilized by the learners to comply with backlogs in learning outputs while teachers are expected to attend to their usual activities including in-service training and other learning-related undertakings.”

The Quarter 2 examinations, DepEd said, will be conducted on Feb. 7 to 8. The submission of learning outputs by the students, on the other hand, will be from Feb. 7 to 12 through online platforms and other mechanisms without “in-person contact or interference.”

DepEd said that the lost contact days shall be “compensated by mechanisms such as independent study, remediation, enhancement activities, and other related teaching-learning interactions.”

School heads were also instructed to design schemes or strategies to “operationalize these mechanisms.”

In a separate regional memorandum dated Jan. 13, DepEd Calabarzon also announced the school calendar adjustment in the region to “foster academic ease.”

DepEd Calabarzon has declared the suspension of classes in all grades levels in public schools from Jan. 17 to 29.

This move is to support the provisions of DM-CI-2022-009 and OUCI-2020-307 and part of the region’s initiative for “safe operations and well-being of stakeholders” as contained in the Basic Education Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP).

The class suspension, DepEd said, shall include all “other school activities, whether physical or virtual (online), that involve school-based personnel, learners, and parents.”

For private schools in Metro Manila, DepEd Human Resource and Organizational Development Officer-in-Charge Wilfredo Cabral, who also serves as the DepEd NCR Regional Director, said that they “may adopt the measures” in public schools as “basis and scheme of class suspension to extent applicable.”

DepEd Region IV-A Director Francis Bringas also noted that private schools in Calabarzon “may exercise their own discretion” when it comes to the suspension of classes in consultation with parents’ associations.