Home visits for learners with disabilities a ‘challenge’ amid COVID-19 —DepEd exec

Attending to some additional needs of learners with disabilities would be a "challenge" for the Department of Education (DepEd) as it implements distance learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an education official on Thursday.

During a Senate hearing, Director Leila Areola from the DepEd's Bureau of Learning Delivery-Student Inclusion Division said a learning continuity plan has also been crafted for special education.

"Are you going to be doing home visits for those who need interventions, like for example a speech therapist. Typically, they go to the SPED center to undertake their speech therapy. Is that part of the learning continuity plan?" Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chair of the committee on basic education, asked.

"What our learning facilitators will be doing is to assist them on how they are going to undertake the different activities as contained in the self-learning modules but as to those services that can be offered by specialists, that's going to be a challenge on the part of the Department of Education, to be honest with it," Areola said in response.

Citing previous available data, Gatchalian said there are about 231,000 learners with disabilities in the Philppine education system.

He suggested that the DepEd should come up with a list of specialists who can be deployed, and a tally of how many students would require their assistance.

Areola said that DepEd has yet to wait for the completion of the ongoing enrollment to map and profile the learners with disabilities and determine how many of them would need visits from specialists while learning remotely.

Enrollment has been extended until July 15. As of Monday, over 42,000 students with disabilities have enrolled out of the more than 15 million who have so far registered for the K-12 program in the country.

According to the DepEd, existing materials for special education have already been harvested, including self-learning modules (SLMs), that will be converted to different accessible formats.

"There's going to be inclusive e-books or e-modules. These e-books will be embedded with sign language interpretation and audio will also be provided," Areola said.

"For radio and TV, the SLMs will be converted to radio scripts and eventually audio lessons... part of that video lesson should be sign language interpretation," she added.

Meanwhile, learners with disabilities who are already "mainstreamed" would have the same modules with that of regular students but they will be provided with additional materials to be able to easily digest the lessons, the Deped official further said.

The opening of classes in the Philippines has been scheduled on August 24. President Rodrigo Duterte said he will not allow face-to-face interactions of students and teachers until a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available.

The DepEd said blended platforms of learning will be used including printed modules, TV, radio, and internet. —LDF, GMA News