Department of Education (DepEd) Undersecretary Tonisito Umali expressed confidence that their department is ready for the opening of the school year 2020-2021 on October 5, Monday.
In an interview with Usec. Umali said it is important for them to identify the various difficult teaching and learning methods that students and teachers go through due to the pandemic.
According to him, they have already distributed self-learning modules (SLM) to different parts of the world which will be used in the online learning of the students.
“Meron akong mga numero rito pero as of September 27 pa ito, eh October 5 na sa Lunes. Meron na tayong 533, 209, 023 million Self Learning Modules (SLMs) distributed na gagamitin ng mga bata sa unang dalawa hanggang apat na linggo ng pasukan ng first quarter,” said Umali.
The said number is said to be equivalent to 80 percent then but DepEd allegedly believes that they have distributed close to 100 percent of SLMs.
“Humigit kumulang 22.5 million enrollees for our public basic education system and that is 99.68 percent of the exact number that we got for last school year 2019-2020, sa pampublikong paaralan ‘yan. Napakalaking bilang niyan at ‘yan po ‘yung nagpapahayag na kailangan nating gawin lahat ito na nais talaga nilang magpatuloy ang kanilang edukasyon,” he added.
“Sa private schools naman po nasa 2.16 milyon bagama’t ‘yan ay bahagya lamang ng kalahati ng kabuuang bilang na mayroon tayo dati. Patuloy pa rin nating hinahanap at inaasahan natin na lalaki pa ito kasi baka hindi pa nairereport lahat ng private schools ang kanilang mga enrollees,” Umali added.
He also said that the education sector is ready to validate the data they hold to ensure that no one is late at the start of class on Monday.
