GROUP 1 – BSN-II

 Belarga, Czarina Dawn

The education system of the Philippines has been highly influenced by the country’s colonial
history.  That history has included periods of Spanish, American and Japanese rule and occupation.   The
most important and lasting contributions came during America’s occupation of the country, which began
in 1898.  It was during that period that English was introduced as the primary language of instruction
and a system of public education was first established—a system modeled after the United States school
system and administered by the newly established Department of Instruction. Like the United States,
the Philippine nation has an extensive and highly inclusive system of education, including higher
education.  In the present day, the United States continues to influence the Philippines education
system, as many of the country’s teachers and professors have earned advanced degrees from United
States universities.
Although the Philippine system of education has long served as a model for other Southeast Asian
countries, in recent years that system has deteriorated. This is especially true in the more remote and
poverty-stricken regions of the country.  While Manila, the capital and largest city in the Philippines,
boasts a primary school completion rate of nearly 100 percent, other areas of the country, including
Mindanao and Eastern Visayas, have a primary school completion rate of only 30 percent or less.  Not
surprisingly, students who hail from Philippine urban areas tend to score much higher in subjects such as
mathematics and science than students in the more rural areas of the country.

Education in the Philippines is offered through formal and non-formal systems.  Formal
education typically spans 14 years and is structured in a 6+4+4 system:  6 years of primary school
education, 4 years of secondary school education, and 4 years of higher education, leading to a
bachelor’s degree.  This is one of the shortest terms of formal education in the world. In the Philippines,
the academic school year begins in June and concludes in March, a period that covers a total of 40
weeks.  All higher education institutions operate on a semester system—fall semester, winter semester
and an optional summer term.  Schooling is compulsory for 6 years, beginning at age 7 and culminating
at age 12.  These 6 years represent a child’s primary school education.

The year 2020 is plagued with unprecedented problems that challenged the current global and
national socio-political and economic landscape. In the time of COVID-19 pandemic, the global
education system is in the process of transforming and adapting to new and challenging situations which
test the conventional learning process of human interaction inside a classroom, and capitalize in virtual
and online education through the help of technology. This paper tries to elucidate how the higher
education system of the Philippines coped with the challenge of providing adequate and quality
education services in the time of COVID-19. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease
caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. Most people infected with the COVID-19 virus will experience
mild to moderate respiratory illness and recover without requiring special treatment.   Older people, and
those with underlying medical problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory
disease, and cancer are more likely to develop serious illness. The COVID-19 virus spreads primarily
through droplets of saliva or discharge from the nose when an infected person coughs or sneezes, so it’s
important that you also practice respiratory etiquette (for example, by coughing into a flexed elbow).

The best way to prevent and slow down transmission is be well informed about the COVID-19
virus, the disease it causes and how it spreads. Protect yourself and others from infection by washing
your hands or using an alcohol based rub frequently and not touching your face.  At this time, there are
no specific vaccines or treatments for COVID-19. However, there are many ongoing clinical trials
evaluating potential treatments.
 On March 18, 2020, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization estimated that 107
countries had implemented national school closures related to COVID-19, affecting 862 million children
and young people, roughly half the global student population. This situation had rapidly escalated from
29 countries with national school closures a week before.

School closures are based on evidence and assumptions from influenza outbreaks that they
reduce social contacts between students and therefore interrupt the transmission.

One way that school closures are effective during outbreaks might be through forcing parents to
work at home and thus reducing work-related contacts. However, reviews have also noted the adverse
effects of school closure, including economic harms to working parents, health-care workers, and other
key workers being forced from work to childcare, and to society due to loss of parental productivity,
transmission from children to vulnerable grandparents, loss of education, harms to child welfare
particularly among the most vulnerable pupils, and nutritional problems especially to children for whom
free school meals are an important source of nutrition.

The COVID-19 pandemic is first and foremost a health crisis. Many countries have (rightly)
decided to close schools, colleges and universities. The crisis crystalizes the dilemma policymakers are
facing between closing schools (reducing contact and saving lives) and keeping them open (allowing
workers to work and maintaining the economy). The severe short-term disruption is felt by many
families around the world: home schooling is not only a massive shock to parents’ productivity, but also
to children’s social life and learning. Teaching is moving online, on an untested and unprecedented
scale. Student assessments are also moving online, with a lot of trial and error and uncertainty for
everyone. Many assessments have simply been cancelled. Importantly, these interruptions will not just
be a short-term issue, but can also have long-term consequences for the affected cohorts and are likely
to increase inequality.  

With this pandemic, our educational nature was highly affected because we, student nurses
have a skill-based program that includes clinical duties which we cannot do online because we have to
take care of our patients in an actual practice and hospital facility. We were all caught off guard; the
schools/universities, professors and students were not all ready with this online situation especially
because most of us used to have a face-to-face learning with the professor discussing his/her lectures in
front. Based on the opinions of the students gathered online, a huge amount of them are not in favor to
have online classes because they believe that the quality of learning is not the same to the face-to-face
learning we used to have and there are also different factors that hinder a student to have an easy way
to attend class online. This includes the availability and strength of the internet, the home environment,
the focus of a student to study on his/her own time budgeting, financial problem and etc. School
closures helped a lot in order to stop the transmission of the virus but the education of students was
being affected. While doing our requirements, complying with our exams and attending some zoom
meetings, we also do our part to become more knowledgeable about the happenings in the country and
worldwide by reading news and articles, watching live news on Facebook and other platforms and
especially by keeping an eye on the growing numbers of COVID-19 positive cases. It is hard to study
when you are also becoming anxious about what you read online and heard on the news.
 Going to school is the best public policy tool available to raise skills. While school time can be
fun and can raise social skills and social awareness, from an economic point of view the primary point of
being in school is that it increases a child’s ability. Perhaps to the disappointment of some, children have
not generally been sent home to play. The idea is that they continue their education at home, in the
hope of not missing out too much. Poor facilities in public schools signify that students are not receiving
their rights of having a sufficiently available and well-maintained school facilities. Indications of having
these poor facilities are non-working or poorly maintained public comfort rooms, lack of classrooms,
overcrowding in classrooms, poor ventilation, unsanitary and crowded canteens and more. While the
(DepEd’s) online learning, virtual classes and hybrid classes are admirable for the continuous learning of
the students, the reality is a majority of our population does not have access to internet. The internet in
the country remains the most expensive yet the slowest among Asian countries. I do not see how virtual
classes being proposed by the DepEd can be effectively implemented across all sectors. The poor will be
at a disadvantage here. The closure of schools, colleges and universities not only interrupts the teaching
for students around the world; the closure also coincides with a key assessment period and many exams
have been postponed or cancelled. School facilities are a collection of buildings used to provide
educational programs for students. These facilities provide students or pupils with a place to learn that
is under the direction of teachers. Homeschooling or home based learning is the education of children at
home.

Families are central to education and are widely agreed to provide major inputs into a child’s
learning, as described by Bjorklund and Salvanes (2011). The current global-scale expansion in home
schooling might at first thought be seen quite positively, as likely to be effective. But typically, this role is
seen as a complement to the input from school. Parents supplement a child’s math learning by
practicing counting or highlighting simple math problems in everyday life; or they illuminate history
lessons with trips to important monuments or museums. Being the prime driver of learning, even in
conjunction with online materials, is a different question; and while many parents round the world do
successfully school their children at home, this seems unlikely to generalize over the whole population. 

One of the sources of strength and motivation of the students are their families. A lot of us are
experiencing mental health problems which include worrying from time to time, anxiety, and mild
depression. The role of the family affects big time in mental state of the students. Based on our
experiences this quarantine period, we are lucky enough to have our supportive families behind our
backs who constantly support us while we are studying. It is very new to our families to have us in our
home while we are in college because we normally live in a dormitory. We can say that because of the
love and assistance we have been receiving, it helped us to keep motivated and inspired even if we are
fully loaded with requirements, exams and online discussions in different video call platforms which
cause an undeniable stress. In line with this, we cannot help but to think of our fellow students who
have problems attending online classes. Not everyone has the privilege to study and this pandemic
made it more difficult to others because we are now studying inside the virtual world which not
everyone has an access to. We are delighted to know that a lot of people are helping students to have
their smart phones, laptops and pocket Wi-Fi in order to participate in online classes. Amidst this
pandemic, government issues and chaos all over the world, it is truly the support and love from each
other that shall always prevail.