IATF to ‘most likely’ issue resolution to strongly urge private schools to hold in-person classes

MANILA, Philippines — The government’s pandemic policy-making body is seen to issue a resolution to strongly urge private schools to hold face-to-face classes due to low number of schools in the private sector participating in face-to-face classes, presidential adviser for COVID-19 response Vince Dizon said Tuesday.

He made the remark during a taped briefing with President Rodrigo Duterte after Education Secretary Leonor Briones raised concern over the low number of private schools doing in-person classes, with only 5.47% of the total number of the country’s schools.

Dizon admitted that there is “some resistance” from private schools to opening face-to-face learning due to a “mix of various reasons.”

“The most compelling of which is that some parents in the private schools are still quite apprehensive about letting their children go back to face-to-face, which of course is the right of every parent,” he said.

Due to this low turnout, Dizon said there has been a discussion in the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to issue a resolution strongly urging private schools to go back to face-to-face classes.

“I think the government, in service of the greater public good, we discussed that maybe it is good for the IATF to issue a resolution strongly encouraging private schools to go back to face-to-face as soon as possible. We feel that it is time all ready to go back to face-to-face,” he said.

“The IATF, I think next meeting most likely will issue such a strong endorsement or encouragement for private schools to go back to face-to-face,” Dizon added.

In her presentation to the President, Briones said only 676 out of about 16,000 private schools have started holding face-to-face classes, which translates to only 5.47%

This is a far cry from the number of public schools conducting in-person classes, which is about 25,668 schools or 56.89% of the country’s total number of public schools.

“The challenge is ‘yung private schools kasi out of 16,000 private schools, we only  have 676 doing face-to-face, in spite of the fact that they were quite active in demanding face-to-face,” Briones said.

“Ang private schools, decision nila ‘yun [It’s the decision of the private schools] and so we are now aggressively endeavouring to convince them to open at this time,” she added.

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