CHED AND DEPED: ‘ACADEMIC CALENDAR IS NOT ADVISABLE’

Big universities, such as University of the Philippines, University of Santo Thomas, Ateneo De Manila University and De LaSalle University have started shifting the start of their academic calendar from June to August last two year s.

However, upon reviewing, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) said shifting the academic calendar is not advisable.

In a report by GMA News Online, CHED Chairperson Patricia Licuanan said that while autonomous higher education institutions have the option to move the start of their school year as long as it is within the law, CHED still “does not advise a change in the academic calendar.”

Republic Act no. 7797, which sets the school calendar to a maximum 220 class days, states the school year should start on the first Monday of June but not later than the last day of August.

After looking at socio-cultural implications and the basic education calendar, I can see that June opening is most feasible because opening classes in August might cause greater implications for families from farming and fishing communities where most students, in public schools commonly come from.

Licuanan said an August school opening is complicated “because agricultural cycles cause them [farmer and fisherman] to run out of financial resources in August.”

Department of Education (DepEd) echoed CHED against an August opening after considering the high temperatures and the long holidays during summer. DepEd noted that tropical cyclones in the last 10 years happen between July and September. Thus, shifting the start of the academic calendar from June to August would not make much of a difference and classes were usually suspended from July to October.

DepEd study showed that learning becomes difficulty during the summer when temperature may reach 40 degrees Celsius.

There are long holiday during the summer months and the DepEd survey also showed a 95 percent support for June to March academic year.

In a position paper published online, Licuanan said shift does not necessarily “internationalize” the country’s colleges and universities.

She said there are other more important issues to handle such as the quality of students and whether this is at par with international standards.

“This is the essence and challenge of Asean integration, and the academic calendar is not a major issue,” Licuanan said, adding that there is no provision in the integration about “synchronizing academic calendars” in the regi on.

--oOo— The author is teacher applicant at Don Honorio Ventura Technological State University