DepEd sets review on time allotment for in-person classes

The Department of Education is set to review the time allotment for face-to-face classes, after an evaluation report from teachers indicated that it is "too short" to maximize for student learning.

“Based on our feedback from the teachers and the schools — because we have a monitoring and evaluation tool in their reporting every week — one observation they have is that the time that we have allotted for the face-to-face classes is too just short to maximize,” DepEd undersecretary Nepomuceno Malaluan said in an interview on One News.

Malaluan said that according to teachers, the three hours for kindergarten and four-hour time allotment for higher grade levels up to the senior high school is "not enough" especially in the far-flung areas where students also take effort to go to school.

“This is something that we will review, with respect to the time allotment, with our counterparts in the DOH (Department of Health). This will be one of [the items of] our agenda,” Malaluan said.

Another concern that the DepEd will look into is the teachers' situation of currently dealing with face-to-face and distance learning all at the same time, Malaluan said.

President Rodrigo Duterte in September approved the conduct of limited face-to-face classes in areas with minimal risk of COVID-19 infection.

In November, around 100 public schools and 20 private schools in other regions initially started the pilot run of face-to-face classes set by the DepEd.

No cases of COVID-19 infection were recorded during the first week of the implementation of the pilot face-to-face classes, the DepEd reported.

GMA News online is still contacting Malaluan for more details of the "short time allotment" concerns of teachers. —LBG, GMA News