Philippines schools reopen after two years of Covid curbs

Nine out of 10 children in the Philippines were suffering from ‘learning poverty’

A teacher watches her students walk inside a classroom after a short break at the start of classes at a school in Quezon City, suburban Manila on 22 August 2022 (AFP via Getty Images)

Millions of students in the Philippines on Monday went to school after the government lifted Covid restrictions for the first time in more than two years.

In early 2020, the then Philippines president Rodrigo Duterto imposed the world’s longest lockdowns in the country despite calls from several quarters to reopen in-person classes.

The country’s education officials said that starting today about 46 per cent of the nation’s 24,000 public schools would open five times a week. And others will resort to a mix of in-person and online classes until 2 November.

The prolonged lockdown and online classes of students had also led to worry among education experts that this could worsen the alarming literacy rates of students in the Philippines.

Officials said that about 1000 schools will be unable to shift to in-person classes entirely before 2 November for various reasons including damages to school buildings in the last month’s powerful earthquake.

On Friday, education department spokesperson Michael Poa said at a news conference: “We always say that our goal is a maximum of two shifts only but there will be areas that would have to resort to three shifts because they’re really overcrowded.”

He added that despite many concerns it’s “all systems go” for Monday’s resumption of classes.

Millions of students wearing masks queued outside their classrooms and attended the flag-raising ceremonies in their schoolyards across the southeast Asian country as the government phased out remote learning, Reuters reported. It quoted 37-year-old teacher Mylene Ambrocio as saying: “For two years, we longed for face-to-face classes so even if there’s a flood, we will continue our lessons. I am happy to see the children face-to-face.”

Earlier this month, socioeconomic planning secretary Arsenio Balisacan said that “we are committed to pursuing the country’s full reopening, including the return of face-to-face schooling to address the learning losses and increase domestic activities”.

It is important to note that a World Bank study last year revealed that nine out of 10 children in the Philippines were suffering from “learning poverty” or the inability of children by age 10 to read and understand a simple story.

UNICEF Philippines also said in a statement then that “prolonged school closures, poor health risk mitigation, and household-income shocks had the biggest impact on learning poverty, resulting in many children in the Philippines failing to read and understand a simple text by age 10”.

It added that “vulnerable children such as children with disabilities, children living in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas, and children living in disaster and conflict zones fare far worse.”

Vladimir Quetua, the national chair of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers in the Philippines, told Al Jazeera that many students have lost skills, as well as their interest in studying.

He said: “Generally, the impact of these two years has been the quality of education. Some of our grade eight students, [do not know] how to write, how to compute numbers. And many of our students lack interest in studying at all.”

Meanwhile, in Manila’s San Pedro Elementary School, sixth-grade student Sophia Macahilig said she was “excited” to meet her classmates and teachers after more than two years of online classes. She told AFP: “We used to have fun and now I can have fun again.”

Outside school premises, students underwent temperature checks and rubbed their hands with dollops of sanitiser before going for their in-class lessons.

On Twitter, Ash Presto, whose bio says that she is a “Filipina sociologist studying public policy” at the National University of Singapore, pointed out: “Heartbreaking scenes on the 1st day of class in the Philippines. Pressing issues beyond ROTC today: unsafe roads leading to schools, subpar textbooks, lack of classrooms and furniture, underpayment of teachers, unclear guidelines re: safety protocols, etc etc.”