More than 5,000 public and private schools in Central Luzon are seen to conduct face-to-face (F2F) classes in August this year.
Michelle Catap-Lacson, DepEd III information officer, said on Thursday that 3,686 public schools and 1,487 private schools in the region had been nominated to implement face-to-face classes.
“All our public schools, as well as private schools, are now undergoing School Safety Assessment Tool (SSAT) compliance for them to be able to conduct face-to-face classes,” Lacson said in a regional new television interview.
SSAT evaluates the readiness of schools following the four indicators — managing school operations, focusing on teaching and learning, wellbeing and protection, and school-community coordination.
“One of the security measures that we also look into which is included in the SSAT is for the schools to provide safety equipment for our teachers,” she said.
Lacson also said that while some schools in the region have already implemented limited in-school classes in the past seven months, there were no reported transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases.
“For the past seven months, we have not recorded a single case of Covid-19 transmission in our schools,” she said.
Meanwhile, there are still 91 public and 125 private schools in the region awaiting local government unit (LGU) concurrence as of June 30, this year.
“Karamihan na reasons ng mga school kung bakit hindi sila nakakapag-implement ng (Most of the reasons of some schools on why they could not implement face to–face is because they lack the LGU concurrence),” she said.
“Yung mga ibang LGU po kasi (Some of the LGUs), although DepEd does not require the vaccination status of our learners for them to participate in the face-to-face classes. However, some LGU officials prefer that participants in the face-to-face must be vaccinated,” she added.
Lacson expressed hope that more private schools could participate in the implementation of the face-to-face classes.
“Our advocacy for face-to-face classes is not only for the public. The public schools come first to set as models and we do not want to leave behind the private schools because they are also regarded as our educational partners,” she said. (PNA)
