Briones: Launching of school year 2020-2021 was ‘very successful’

MANILA, Philippines — The opening of classes for school year 2020 to 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic is “very successful” as glitches that were recorded are very minimal, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said Monday.

“Generally as a whole, very successful ang launching. Mabibilang mo sa daliri ng isang kamay ‘yung may mga problema,” Briones said in a press briefing.

(Generally as a whole, the launching of classes is very successful. You can only count on your fingers the number of problems that happened.)

“On the basis of these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 incidents na bilang na bilang namin including errors, kunwari sa learning modules, eh lumalabas na hindi naman kasalanan ng DepEd,” she added.

(On the basis of these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 incidents of errors that happened, for example in modules, it appears that it was not the fault of DepEd.)

READ: DepEd disowns self-learning module using ‘dirty names’

During her speech on the official opening of classes on October 5, Briones declared victory against COVID-19, which earned the ire of some groups lamenting issues hounding the education sector on the launching of the school year during the pandemic.

But according to the Education secretary, she wasn’t saying that the opening of classes was perfect.

“When the President made the final decision and we implemented that decision, that was a major victory dahil napaka-ingay, napaka-vicious, napakabastos ng mga criticism at ng exchange ng arguments at nahihirapan kung minsan ang public na magsift ng truth from fiction,” she said.

(When the President made the final decision and we implemented it, that was a major victory considering the noisy and vicious criticism and exchange of arguments that confused the public in sifting truth from fiction.)

“The fact that we were able to open schools for this academic school year is a victory in itself because of all the vicious noise that was going on from very limited groups,” Briones added.

JE