Pre-schools face dire school year

Basic coordination, gross and fine motor skills are the usual activities with them and basic soundings of the alphabet

Private schools, most especially the small ones, have suffered deep economic damage from the coronavirus — as some of them are in danger of closing down.

For instance, the South J’s

Angel Learning Center Inc.

(SJALC) — a kindergarten school in Muntinlupa City — faces a lack of enrollees for the upcoming school year due to the persistent threat of the coronavirus disease 2019

(COVID-19).

“Parents are wary if they will enroll their students this year. They are thinking of skipping the school year because of the way our education will be delivered,”

Angelica

Consolacion,

SJALC’s owner and administrator, told Daily Tribune in an interview.

SJALC has around 30 to 40 pupils every school year, with three teachers and three non-teaching staff. The school owner said she’s only expecting half of that number or even lower will enroll in her school. “As of now, we only have four enrollees,” she said. She said she will be forced to lay off some of her staff, both teaching and non-teaching, if the number of enrollees will not improve.

“I don’t want to lay off any of our staff, but challenges keep on coming. As of the moment, we are not yet at the point where I have to lay off staff, but if the number of enrollees does not improve, we should expect the worst,” Consolacion said.

“It is something we are trying to avoid. I will not accept any pay for myself and divert every centavo just to keep every employee,” she added.

The school owner also noted it would be challenging for them to implement online learning for their students. “The online platform, which is very challenging especially for kindergarten, the school will not be able to shoulder the cost,” she explained. “If it is just Zoom and video, it will not be enough to transfer what we uphold in our school, the quality education each learner deserves,” she said.

She added she is now coordinating with a third party that could help them deliver online education for their kindergarten learners.

“I am currently in negotiation with this online company that will deliver not just video conference, but the interactive mode that we, a kindergarten school, needs,” Consolacion said.

“Their rate is very high at $118.93 year. However, there is a directive not to raise tuition and, of course, it is also a consideration for the parents, who are also suffering the effects of this pandemic,” she added.

She said her school is pushing modular distance learning, but to effectively guide their learners, they need the interactive aspect where teachers and students can interact in the same online whiteboard.

“We will deliver the modules from house to house for the safety and benefit of our students. Then they will have a video conference with their teachers during class hours to guide them through the modules,” she shared.

I don’t want to lay off any of our staff, but challenges keep on coming.

Meanwhile, a federation of private schools is very much worried about the impact this pandemic shall have on pre-school members. They shall be the worst hit since online distance learning hardly applies to toddlers.

“We are talking here of three years old in Nursery, four years old in Kinder and five years old in Preparatory. The latter is Kinder II in other schools. These are the cutest kids who are doing academics for the first time. Very fidgety and non-readers and non-writers yet. Basic coordination, gross and fine motor skills are the usual activities with them and basic soundings of the alphabet. An assistant teacher is needed in the room and surely, it is personal direction,” Eleazardo Kasilag, president of the Federation of Associations of Private School Administrators (FAPSA), said in a statement.

“Now, how can they cope in tablet education? They could not even hold a pencil? The teacher has to give them direct personal training, which should now be duplicated at home,” Kasilag added.

He said pre-schools will surely feel the impact as there is no face-to-face learning, and unless there is strong connectivity in the home, parents can teach the modules. The tablet, with little interaction, may deliver the kid’s training.

“This scenario now looms sadly for both the teachers being substituted by parents, as well as the parents who are tasked to DIY the toddlers’ education. The school administrator of preparatory schools may need to grapple with the reality of austerity, if not total bankruptcy,” Kasilag explained.

The group has asked the Department of Education to help private schools to coordinate with Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) to include teachers from private schools in small business wage subsidies, saying private school teachers are hardly included in any amelioration program of the government.

“Remember, our disappointed FAPSA members have received no SAP (Special Amelioration Program) up to this time. Most of them contemplate joining in the call of the President not to hold classes without the vaccine. But, of course, the pre-school administrators are praying hard that they get subsidized, too, during the entire isolation, just as their counterpart teachers in public schools have been financially supported,” he added.