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PIONEER SCHOOL. Luis Y. Ferrer Jr. Senior High School is the first public institution in General Trias City, Cavite to offer senior high school program in 2016.
Luis Y. Ferrer Jr. Senior High School website
CAVITE, Philippines – Amid classroom shortage and frequent suspension of classes, two schools in General Trias City, Cavite, have adopted a blended learning setup to ensure the continuity of learning.
Ivan Inductivo, assistant schools division superintendent, told Rappler on Tuesday, July 22, that the alternative mode of learning at the Luis Y. Ferrer Jr. Senior High School (LYFJSHS) and Pasong Kawayan II West National High School is one of their short-term solutions to disruptions and hurdles to learning delivery.
“It’s challenging, but we need to ensure learning will continue. We are aware of disruptions, the natural calamities, but our efforts must focus on how to ensure that learning will continue,” Inductivo said.
LYFJSHS currently holds three days of face-to-face classes and two days of online classes or asynchronous learning in a week.
Xaris Llorente, a pioneer teacher at LYFJSHS since 2016, said blended learning is their school’s temporary solution to swelling class size. They only have fewer than 40 instructional classrooms available for almost 4,000 enrolled students.
“Because of the accommodation the school is making, we don’t reach 60 or 70 students in one classroom. Teaching is still manageable because it’s not overcrowded. The teacher-to-student ratio is still somewhat ideal,” Llorente told Rappler on July 2.
“If we insist on having five days of classes, there might be 100 of us in one classroom,” she said in a mix of English and Filipino.
The Philippines is facing a massive backlog of 165,000 classrooms, based on Department of Education (DepEd) data.
According to Inductivo, they are following the mechanisms of blended learning based on DepEd orders. They activate modular and online classes, considering the students’ resources, when face-to-face meetings are disrupted.
The official also assured that they are monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of this learning setup through their Curriculum Implementation Division and School Governance and Operations Division.
“If blended learning is well-placed, and all the mechanisms are in place, and all the resources are provided, there were cases during the pandemic where it was actually effective. We need to monitor it constantly,” Inductivo said.
He added that they are constantly checking the submitted outputs of students and monitoring if they receive the needed learning competencies.
Llorente, meanwhile, expressed concerns about their current setup, saying it compromises the quality of learning for students.
“I truly think that the five-day setup makes students more productive. I see a big difference in the students back when face-to-face classes were held five days a week, compared to now when I only see them in person for three days,” she said.
While she cannot completely gauge the effectiveness of this setup because there are still students who excel, Llorente believes that they are restricted by their lack of interaction with them.
In its Year Two report, the Second Congressional Commission on Education said that the literacy gap among Filipino students worsened by up to three years due to the pandemic, when blended learning was widely implemented in the country.
Inductivo, meanwhile, said their schools division is continuously receiving support from the local government unit (LGU) to help the teachers and students.
“The city government provides a communication allowance of 500 pesos per month to teachers to help them in communicating with their students,” he said.
Inductivo further shared they are also receiving assistance in procuring devices for teaching, such as laptops, televisions, and printers, while students are receiving free school supplies every year.
Moreover, he said that the division office, along with the LGU, is constantly making efforts to source funds and partnerships for the construction of additional classrooms and school buildings in the city.
“Through our engineering office, we try to look for buildable spaces in schools. We assess the student population — those with a high number of students are our priority. We then propose these to the central office, coordinate with the district representative, and bring it to the local school boards,” Inductivo said.
LYFJSHS, established in 2016, was the first public institution to offer a senior high school curriculum in General Trias City.
While additional classrooms were constructed in the previous years, these were inadequate to accommodate the increasing number of enrollees every year.
In addition, other public schools in the city have also started accepting senior high students in recent academic years, but have failed to alleviate the situation of LYFJSHS.
Llorente said students still opt to enroll in their school because it offers a wide range of specializations, unlike the other newly established institutions.
In September 2008, Municipal Ordinance 08-61 was enacted to require all subdivision and condominium developers in the city to construct public school buildings, either within their development area or at an existing nearby school, as a condition for project approval.
Llorente said the lot where LYFJSHS is currently located was donated by a subdivision developer in compliance with the municipal ordinance. – Rappler.com
Jayvee Mhar Viloria is a development communication student at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He is the associate managing editor for longform reporting of Tanglaw, the official student publication of UPLB College of Development Communication. He is currently a Rappler intern.
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