Tesda chief Isidro Lapeña. FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — With some areas transitioning into more relaxed restrictions amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) is targeting the resumption of its classes in June.
Tesda Director-General Isidro Lapeña said Thursday that the planned date for the resumption of classes is still up for approval of the government’s COVID-19 task force.
“With the easing of the enhance community quarantine (ECQ) to modified and there are many other places that has now (been placed under) a general community quarantine (GCQ), we plan to resume classes by June, of course, subject to the approval of the IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force) and subject to the regulations that are pronounced by the IATF,” Lapeña said during a Senate hearing on the status of the government’s COVID-19 response.
The Tesda chief explained that the classes would be adjusted to adapt to the “new normal” triggered by the pandemic.
He said Tesda has come up with an operations plan that would ensure a “more relevant and responsive technical vocational education and training.” The objective of the said plan is to develop “innovative” and “flexible” programs.
“This is the bundle program and this is a shift from the traditional face-to-face training delivery mode to a online or a combined online and face-to-face delivery mode,” he said.
“This will be compliant to the regulations that is being required by the IATF and the Department of Health (DOH),” he added.
Tesda is currently offering 68 online training courses, Lapeña noted.
Surge of registrants
Lapeña said the number of registrants who have signed up to Tesda’s online program surged to 491,931 since the government imposed an ECQ mid-March.
“These has helped our kababayans opt to stay at home and this is what encouraged us to come up with a modification of our courses from the face-to-face training delivery modality to online,” he said.
While conducting “fully-online” classes would be th- ideal situation to minimize direct contact, Lapeña said there are specific courses that “needs to have a face-to-face training modality.”
“Of course if we can do it on a fully-online delivery modality then that’s the ideal one but in cases that needs to have a face-to-face training modality, then it will be what we call a flexible or bundled program,” he explained.
The bundled program consists of both online and face-to-face mode of training.
Based on the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease Resolution No. 37, Cebu City and Mandaue City will still be under ECQ until May 31.
Meanwhile, eight other high-risk areas will be under MECQ until the end of the month including Metro Manila, Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Zambales, Angeles City, and Laguna.
Latest figures from the DOH showed that there are so far 13,434 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country. Of the number, 3,000 have recovered while 846 have died.