The Department of Education (DepEd) is set to issue the guidelines which will identify the extra-curricular or co-curricular activities that will be allowed or disallowed for the school year (SY) 2022-2023.
DepEd Spokesperson Michael Poa, in this week’s press briefing, said that the agency will soon issue “clear and specific” guidelines that will enumerate which activities will be allowed for this school year.
“The purpose really is because we had learning gap in the two years, we were in a pandemic so we really want our learners to focus on the academics,” Poa said after Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte said that extra-curricular activities will not be allowed this year.
Poa said the issuance to be released will enumerate which activities will be allowed or will not be allowed for learners and will define what extra- or co-curricular activities are.
To address pandemic learning losses, Poa also underscored the need to focus on the subjects that “we really need to concentrate on in terms of bridging that learning gap.”
In a statement issued Aug. 30, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines slammed DepEd’s banning of extra-curricular activities
“This approach can be counter-productive as such can lead to burn out among learners and teachers alike,” the group said.
On DepEd’s part, Poa said that “we do respect the opinion of these teachers’ groups, it helps when it comes to inputs and insights.”
However, he pointed out that schools were already instructed to hold psychosocial support activities for the learners.
READ:
https://mb.com.ph/2022/08/18/first-week-of-classes-to-focus-on-psychosocial-support-activities-deped/
“We also understand that it cannot be purely academic when it comes to our learners. That's why we have psychosocial support activities, that’s not definitely academic, to help students’ mental health and well being,” Poa said.
As part of DepEd’s learning recovery plan, Poa said that psychosocial activities are being done in schools which include non-academic activities such as painting, among others.
While the Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELCs) are still being enforced this school year, Poa said that DepEd is also focusing on bridging the learning gaps.
Teachers, he explained, are doing assessments among learners so there will be profiling and clustering what are the possible “mismatch” on what they already know based on their respective grade levels.
Poa said that DepEd is also focusing on areas where Filipino learners are lagging such as science, mathematics, and literacy skills.