Student union: Larger budget needed for safe, quality face-to-face classes resumption

The National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) on Friday said a larger education budget was necessary to ensure a safe, accessible, and quality resumption of full face-to-face classes.

“If we return to in-person learning without sufficient budget and aid, we return to the old system of learning that has long alienated Filipino students in the first place. We return to lacking facilities and to underpaid and overworked professors,” NUSP National President Jandeil Roperos said in a statement.

CHED had issued Memorandum Order No. 16, allowing “the disposition towards transitioning to the safe return to physical campuses and bringing back learners to school is ground as a result of recovery measures from the impact of COVID-19.”

Memorandum Order No. 16 also mandates that laboratory courses, on-the-job training (OJT), and National Service Training Program activities should also be held primarily onsite.

Roperos, however, raised concerns over how the government and CHED would provide the necessary support to ensure the safety and quality of face-to-face education for students.

“We’ve long seen how ineffective full distance learning is. The bigger questions, then, are: will the national government and CHED provide the necessary support to ensure safe, accessible, and quality face-to-face education? Will they strengthen the infrastructures needed for hybrid learning? Will they subsidize the tools needed by students and teachers alike?” Roperos asked.

“It must be recalled that as early as August 2021, the Union and more than a hundred student councils had already called for the resumption of face-to-face classes. In September of the same year, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) itself posited that ‘online and modular learning is only 37% as effective as face-to-face learning,’” she added.

GMA News Online sought CHED's comment on the matter but the commission had yet to reply as of this posting.

The Senate approved CHED's proposed P35.463 billion budget for 2023.

Meanwhile, reactions to the CHED’s order that classes in higher educational institutions should either be hybrid or fully in-person for the second semester of the academic year 2022–2023 were mixed among college students. — DVM, GMA Integrated News