DepEd says opening of school year successful despite internet woes, late modules

October 9, 2020

Despite the challenges as distance learning started on Monday, the Department of Education (DepEd) claimed that the opening of classes was successful.

“The first day of classes was successful. If the October 5 opening was successful the same is being experienced until this Friday except in some areas like in Batangas where there are teachers who experience (internet) signal problem,” DepEd Undersecretary Tonisito Umali said on Friday.

Umali also confirmed there are students who have not received their self-learning modules amid the official opening of classes.

“What we are trying to say, except from some situation where there are poor internet connection, there are areas where the parents have not yet received the modules. the reason behind this, the default mode is that the parents should get the modules from the school but if there is a (mis)communication and the parents were not able to get it, we will deliver it to their houses,” he said.

“We were able to say generally  all over the country were able to distribute our self-learning modules to almost all of our 22.6 million public school learners which if we will compare to school year 2019-2020, that is already the 100 percent,” he added.

Umali said there are students who still failed to enroll for the school year 2020-2021.

“It does not mean that all of our students in 2019 to 2020 have already enrolled this present school year because there are more or less 400,000 transferees from our private schools,” he said.

Umali explained that internet service connection is not part of the mandate of the DepEd but he said they are trying to communicate with the right government agency and private companies to address the problem.

“Our people should understand that on the part of the DepEd, we can only do limited things about which is to coordinate with the right government agency which is the Department of Information and Communications Technology and to our private internet service providers,” he said.

“That is already being done by the DepEd, because it is not our mandate to regulate or give orders to the internet service providers on how they can strengthen (the internet signal),” he added. Robina Asido/DMS