LEARNING RECOVERY. File photo shows a student participating in an online class. DepEd-7 Regional Director Salustiano Jimenez on Tuesday (Dec. 27, 2022) cited the crucial role of parents in the recovery program to help learners catch up from learning losses due to the pandemic. (PNA file photo by John Rey Saavedra)
CEBU CITY – The all-out support of parents is a crucial element in the government's effort to recover the learning losses -- especially in reading -- of elementary pupils due to the Covid-19 pandemic, an education official said on Tuesday.
Salustiano Jimenez, regional director of the Department of Education (DepEd) in Central Visayas, said in a press conference teachers are now focused on implementing a “learning recovery plan” side by side with the basic education learning continuity plan to restore the reading performance of Grade 3 pupils to pre-pandemic level.
“Based on our data (taken from) our survey, (we have a) very sad result because there’s a big percentage of children, especially the Kinder and K3 stage that cannot read. That (pandemic) was the time or period that the learners were in their house without contact or interaction with the teachers,” Jimenez said.
He attributed the performance in the more than two years of having the pupils’ learning sessions at home through modules, TV broadcasts, and other types of blended learning modalities.
“That (home-based learning) was partly to blame in terms of reading performance. It was because there was no actual pupil-to-teacher interaction during their Grade 1 and 2 years because of Covid-19,” Jimenez said in a mix of English and Cebuano.
He said that poor internet connectivity also affected the children's performance task submission.
Although there were teachers who conducted home visits to their pupils at the height of the pandemic, he said that “those were not enough.”
Jimenez assured that K3 stage pupils will soon recover, citing the education department’s effort to implement its regional education development plan and the learning recovery plan that, he said, has a contingency plan.
He said that while the education department has fully implemented the in-person classes as directed by Vice President and DepEd Secretary Sara Z. Duterte, many schools are still holding classes in shifts due to a lack of classrooms.
The regional director, however, reported that his office has undertaken repairs of 81 of 884 public schools damaged by Typhoon Odette on Dec. 16 last year. (PNA)
