Amid the challenges brought by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the Department of Education (DepEd) on Monday, Jan. 24, joined education leaders, teachers, learners in the country and around the world in celebrating this year’s International Day of Education.

“The past two years have seen a demonstration of global resilience and commitment for learning continuity amid the disruption of COVID,” Education Secretary Leonor Briones said in a statement.

The International Day of Education is celebrated every year to help raise awareness on the importance of education, among others.

This year marks the fourth International Day of Education under the theme “Changing Course, Transforming Education.”

Briones said that in the Philippines, the DepEd was able to proceed to deliver education services to learners by introducing various distance learning modalities.

Recognizing the country’s efforts to continue education delivery amid the pandemic, DepEd said that the Philippines received 5 stars in UNICEF’s Remote Learning Readiness Index after demonstrating “high performance” across all domains including household level, policy response, and country preparedness.

“A five-star rating identifies countries with the best readiness for remote learning and the highest resilience to crises that lead to disruption of in-person classes,” Briones said.

Despite this, Briones noted that DepEd is fully aware that distance learning “cannot fully compensate” for the inherently social process of learning which needs face-to-face interaction.

Given this, Briones said that DepEd worked closely with the Department of Health (DOH) for the safe reintroduction of in-person classes in schools.

“We began the process through a pilot phase that has provided highly successful, generating confidence among all our stakeholders for the expansion phase,” she said.

Moving forward, Briones said that DepEd is bracing for the “major task of learning recovery.”

However, Briones said that DepEd will also take a cue from learning gains that the situation compelled such as the recovery of household involvement in learning, the support of the local government, and the innovations on learning resources, learning delivery, and learning assessment.