THE Department of Education yesterday said it has no plans yet to revert to the old school calendar in which students have summer vacation in the months of April and May amid the blistering summer heat the country is currently experiencing.
This after Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, the chair of the committee on basic education, said schools should go back to the old June-to-March academic calendar, which gives students a break during the scorching summer months.
Gatchalian’s suggestion came after an incident last Friday in which more than 100 students of the Gulod National High School-Mamatid Extension in Cabuyao, Laguna were hospitalized, showing signs of dehydration and heat exhaustion after taking part in a surprise fire drill in the searing afternoon heat.
“At the moment, there are no plans to revert (to the old school calendar),” DepEd spokesperson Michael Tan Poa said, adding school heads have been given the discretion to suspend classes if temperatures rise and holding face-to-face classes becomes untenable.
“School heads have the discretion to suspend in-person classes and immediately switch to alternative distance mode or blended learning if the environment is not conducive to learning,” he added.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers said a survey they conducted from March 24 to 27 showed that classes really suffer with the scorching summer heat.
ACT chairperson Vladimir Quetua said 87 percent of the 11,706 teachers nationwide who participated in the online survey said students cannot focus on their lessons due to the intolerable heat in public schools.
Quetua said 97 percent of the respondents said their classrooms relied only on electric fans for ventilation while only one percent had air conditioners and 2 percent depend on natural ventilation.
“The classroom atmosphere remains inconducive to learning as only 0.5 percent of respondents deem their classroom conditions as pleasant. About 32 percent said the temperature inside their classrooms is bearable, while 67 percent noted the heat is intolerable,” Quetua said.
He said 62 percent of the respondents were teaching in classes with 36 to 50 students. About 27 percent have classes numbering to 35 learners or less each, while 11 percent have classes of 50 or more learners.
Based on the survey, 64 percent of teachers have existing medical conditions while 82 percent have students with temperature-sensitive ailments.
About 26 percent of the respondent-teachers are hypertensive while 27 percent suffer from migraine. On the other hand, 54 percent of students have asthma.
“One can only imagine the misery of our learners and teachers inside cramped classrooms with no effective ventilation and amid the grueling summer heat,” Quetua said, adding the issue may not have been given much thought by education officials who are in air-conditioned rooms all day.
The ACT chair said the respondents suggested a number of ways on how to address the problem — from installing air conditioners in classrooms, changing the class schedules to avoid the hottest hours of the day, and implementing blended learning by holding in-person in the morning and shifting to distance learning modalities at home in the afternoon.
“Respondents also resoundingly demanded to revert the school calendar to its pre-pandemic schedule when school breaks coincided with the summer months,” he added.
