17INA1
Published Jul 7, 2020 01:17 am
By Merlina Hernando-Malipot
Being one of the regions with the highest number of enrollment, the Department of Education (DepEd) National Capital Region (NCR) is gearing up for the opening of classes this June.
While it has yet to release its official school calendar for SY 2018-2019, DepEd said that the opening of classes in public schools nationwide is usually scheduled on the first week of June – which falls on June 4 this year. School opening in private schools, as per DepEd, can be rescheduled given that it will not be set later than August 4.
(MANILA BULLETIN)
DepEd-NCR Officer-in-Charge (OIC) Wilfredo Cabral, in an interview with the Manila Bulletin, said that public schools in Metro Manila are ready to welcome the learners who will go back to school next month. “For the past three years since 2015, we were able to register a good opening of classes because we encourage our superintendents and principals to prepare,” he said.
Cabral said that DepEd uses a tool called “School Readiness Survey” to assess the readiness of public schools for the opening of classes. “We already distributed this to all our superintendents,” he said. “They have submitted the report and we verified whether the data they have submitted and the data that the Central Office has are the same with the existing data now in the schools,” he explained.
“Apparently, for the initial data, many of the schools are nearly ready but when we verified, the submission tells us that they are already ready for the school opening,” Cabral said when asked about the result of the survey.
Since the efforts of public school heads in the previous years yielded “good results,” Cabral said that they will “do what we did exactly last year.”
Doing their best
Admittedly, Cabral said that there will still be challenges when the classes resume in June.
The usual challenges encountered by public schools every school opening include congested classrooms or overcrowding of students in classrooms as well as other shortage in basic education resources such as teachers, learning materials or textbooks, chairs and other furniture as well as sanitation facilities.
“We’re actually admitting that there were schools which are difficult-situated but our principals are doing their best, same as with our superintendents,” Cabral said. He requested to focus on what the principals are doing rather than highlight on the challenges or possible shortages during the first day of classes – which are usually addressed by schools in the following days or weeks.
Cabral said that the teachers in NCR will start school year conference after the 2018 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections which concluded recently. “We’ll do what we did last year so all students would be accommodated,” he said. Like in the previous years, he noted that Metro Manila public schools will conduct regular classes on the first day of school.
In an effort to address classroom congestion due to lack of buildable space for school building construction, Cabral said that DepEd NCR is continuously coming up with various strategies – from implementing of Flexible Learning Options (FLOs) to renting spaces of private schools that are near to public schools with high enrollment.
Although it will entail some additional budget, Cabral said that DepEd NCR is seriously looking into the possibility of “renting” private schools spaces which will not necessarily be on a voucher program. “We’re still toying with the idea rather than investing on building new classrooms where in fact, your problem is where to build that classroom,” he said.
To ensure that there will be enough teachers, Cabral said that they also computed the number of teachers needed by each school. “We wanted to ensure that all of the 5,000 teaching items released to us as well as the non-teaching personnel and all of those which were not filled last year will be filled this time,” he added.
As early as December last year, Cabral said that all of the City Divisions have started recruitment procedure for teacher hiring. “We’re quite sure that before the opening of classes and hopefully by May 15 or later than that, we can issue appointments for newly-hired teachers,” he ended.
(MANILA BULLETIN)
DepEd-NCR Officer-in-Charge (OIC) Wilfredo Cabral, in an interview with the Manila Bulletin, said that public schools in Metro Manila are ready to welcome the learners who will go back to school next month. “For the past three years since 2015, we were able to register a good opening of classes because we encourage our superintendents and principals to prepare,” he said.
Cabral said that DepEd uses a tool called “School Readiness Survey” to assess the readiness of public schools for the opening of classes. “We already distributed this to all our superintendents,” he said. “They have submitted the report and we verified whether the data they have submitted and the data that the Central Office has are the same with the existing data now in the schools,” he explained.
“Apparently, for the initial data, many of the schools are nearly ready but when we verified, the submission tells us that they are already ready for the school opening,” Cabral said when asked about the result of the survey.
Since the efforts of public school heads in the previous years yielded “good results,” Cabral said that they will “do what we did exactly last year.”
Doing their best
Admittedly, Cabral said that there will still be challenges when the classes resume in June.
The usual challenges encountered by public schools every school opening include congested classrooms or overcrowding of students in classrooms as well as other shortage in basic education resources such as teachers, learning materials or textbooks, chairs and other furniture as well as sanitation facilities.
“We’re actually admitting that there were schools which are difficult-situated but our principals are doing their best, same as with our superintendents,” Cabral said. He requested to focus on what the principals are doing rather than highlight on the challenges or possible shortages during the first day of classes – which are usually addressed by schools in the following days or weeks.
Cabral said that the teachers in NCR will start school year conference after the 2018 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections which concluded recently. “We’ll do what we did last year so all students would be accommodated,” he said. Like in the previous years, he noted that Metro Manila public schools will conduct regular classes on the first day of school.
In an effort to address classroom congestion due to lack of buildable space for school building construction, Cabral said that DepEd NCR is continuously coming up with various strategies – from implementing of Flexible Learning Options (FLOs) to renting spaces of private schools that are near to public schools with high enrollment.
Although it will entail some additional budget, Cabral said that DepEd NCR is seriously looking into the possibility of “renting” private schools spaces which will not necessarily be on a voucher program. “We’re still toying with the idea rather than investing on building new classrooms where in fact, your problem is where to build that classroom,” he said.
To ensure that there will be enough teachers, Cabral said that they also computed the number of teachers needed by each school. “We wanted to ensure that all of the 5,000 teaching items released to us as well as the non-teaching personnel and all of those which were not filled last year will be filled this time,” he added.
As early as December last year, Cabral said that all of the City Divisions have started recruitment procedure for teacher hiring. “We’re quite sure that before the opening of classes and hopefully by May 15 or later than that, we can issue appointments for newly-hired teachers,” he ended.