FOUR days before the opening of Academic Year 2021-2022 in all public schools nationwide on Monday, September 13, 2021, the Bacolod City Public School Teachers Federation (BCPSTF) on Friday urged the national government to provide the needed teaching and resource materials for distance learning.
Richard Gelangre, BCPSTF president, said teachers will again go to the “battlefield” without the necessary resources to sustain the blended learning modalities.
Gelangre said teachers lack laptops for online and offline classes.
The Department of Education (DepEd) issued sim cards for the online classes, but it is yet to be tested if it is effective and reliable, he said.
Papers, inks and printers for the self-learning modules are not sufficient either, he also said.
Gelangre added that often, teachers are the ones looking for school supplies, while most students also lack gadgets for online classes.
He said even if students have gadgets, the problem sometimes is that they do not have internet access.
In a statement, BCPSTF said the Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELC) containing students’ lessons lacks learning activities such as video clips and does not include interactive self-learning methods.
The group lamented that even the teachers’ privacy is also often invaded and their quality time with their families is decreased as they need to respond to students’ queries and submit reports immediately.
BCPSTF also said the teachers’ proportional vacation pay for summer and Christmas are consumed for making modules, attending webinars, answering the learning delivery modality code, complying with mode of verification for the individual personal commitment form and “Brigada Eskuwela,” among others.
The group is also demanding from the national government to ensure provisions of health protection and payment of benefits to education workers and allocate a higher budget for education next year.
For them, it is also better if DepEd implements academic ease, gives the teachers overtime pay, adjusts their inflation allowance to P3,000 and provides P1,500 in internet subsidy.