The Department of Education (DepEd) underscored the importance of ensuring that learners stay safe in cyberspace as the education sector utilizes technology for learning continuity.

“There is a need now, more than ever, to ensure that children stay safe online as even in the post-pandemic setting, the experience of utilizing technology shall most probably be part of the whole education process,” Education Secretary Leonor Briones said on Monday, Feb. 28, during a webinar held to celebrate Safer Internet Day Philippines (SIDPh) 2022.

With the theme “CRC Next Level: Click, Respect, Connect, Ligtas na Ugnayan Online,” DepEd, through its Child Protection Unit (CPU), celebrated this year's SIDPh through the online event which focused on child safeguarding in schools, promoting child online protection and digital literacy in the school environment.

Briones said that the first SIDPh focused its attention on the dangers as well as signs of cyberbullying and the threats to the learning environment of children.

“This has very powerful implications for our efforts to continue the learning process through online methods,” Briones explained.

“If children do not feel safe in online communications or with online methods, then the effectiveness of the learning process will surely be negatively affected,” she added.

Briones explained that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has forced schools to shift to distance learning.

“This has resulted in increased utilization of technology and the internet for children both as a tool for learning and communication,” Briones said.

“The speed with which the technology, knowledge, communications have improved or perhaps brought in new and exciting changes is really mind-boggling,” she added.

Briones also recognized that the Philippines has a “lot of catching up” to do in science, mathematics, and technology, “children must also be kept safe” before they are drawn into other forms of online abuse.

“There is a need, more than ever, for children to stay safe online especially as we are going to use technology more than ever even as we endeavor to balance technology and science, with history, with arts, with culture, and with music,” Briones said.

Through the years, Briones said that DepEd has been strengthening its efforts to improve the quality of education in the country and respond to Philippine education's ever-changing landscape. However, she stressed that the safety of children should never be compromised.

“I keep on repeating, for example, that once we move on to what we describe, as the ‘new normal,’ once we are able to reduce or to immobilize the threats of the various variants of the COVID-19 scourge, now, we must ensure that our children are not harmed in the process,” Briones said.