Group rejects plans to hold F2F classes in low-risk, high vaccination rates areas

AGROUP has aired its objection to the Commission on Higher Education’s (CHED) plans of allowing schools to conduct limited face-to-face classes for all degree programs in certain areas that pose a low risk for coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases, even if they have high vaccination rates.

Take Up Space Movement (TUSM) has thumbed down the idea, despite approvals of having restricted faceto-face learning for specific degree programs.

“These may be necessary conditions, but CHED again obviously failed to consider other factors that affect the quality of education that... students are receiving during distance learning, its shift, and flexible learning,” TUSM said. Funding and the retrofitting of school facilities, as well as its nearby areas, are hard conditions that need to be met, according to the movement. Thus, students and teachers are left anew to shoulder the needs for shifting to face-to-face classes.

This was akin, it said, to the reason many students dropped out from schools during the abrupt transition to distance learning.

“It seems… ched is again null at providing the needs for dropped students to [return… to] the system after a year of distance learning,” the group noted. “Costs [entailed] with transitioning to flexible learning shouldn’t be shouldered by students, or their families themselves.”

The renovation of school facilities and their surrounding environment should have also been considered to ensure a legitimately safe return to the physical conduct of classes, TUSM emphasized.

It likewise explained that students, teachers, and school employees come from different places and cities, and interact within cramped facilities. This increases the risks of contracting and spreading Covid-19.

“We have suffered long enough. The quality of education that we receive has long been neglected and compromised due to CHED’S incompetence and lack of urgency for their academic needs,” TUSM pointed out.

Returning to face-to-face classes must be postponed until the pandemic is contained, it said, which will make it safe for the public, while ensuring the needs of students, teachers, and school employees are met.

“If CHED does not take up the necessities that should be done beforehand, then the conduct of limited face-to-face classes by geographic areas are again doomed to fail,” the group stressed.