EVERYBODY agree that face-to-face classroom instruction is much better and more effective than the current online/modular/blended learning. Not a few are asking how soon can students return to school.
For this to materialize, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases must elevate teachers in the vaccination priority list from Phase 2 – B1 to A4 category. Teachers are also frontliners in the delivery of the essential service of education amid the pandemic.
Teachers are vulnerable to COVID-19 infection as they perform their duties, thus threatening no less than education continuity amid the pandemic. They are at a high risk of getting infected as they are compelled to report to schools and visit communities to distribute modules and facilitate other government programs, such as the Department of Health’s deworming project. Without enough protection from the government, not only are their lives put on the line but also is the future of education.
Data from the Department of Education (DepEd) itself showing a 452 percent increase in the number of infected DepEd personnel from August to October 2020, amid the heightened preparations for school opening, is enough evidence of the teachers’ high level of vulnerability to infection. However, the DepEd data could be sorely outdated. There have been numerous reports on the ground on the alarming surge of infection among teaching and non-teaching personnel in the basic and higher education nationwide, to include the infection of 119 Quezon City DepEd personnel and the death of six; the infections of at least one teacher in every school in Manila; and 48 more active cases of infection among teachers in Las Piñas, Parañaque, Marikina, and Taguig; the infection of 49 personnel in Zambales after attending DepEd seminars; and the death of five in Isabela, as well as of two professors of the Lyceum of the Philippines.
In Western Visayas, we don’t know how many teachers have contracted COVID-9 simply because there is no real mass testing.
It is a blow to our teachers’ morale that the government seems to overlook the value of their work as the country grapples with the pandemic, not to mention the immense hardships and risks that they bear under the ill-prepared distance learning.
The government should also recognize the great efforts of education workers to contribute to the country’s battle against the pandemic. Teaching and non-teaching personnel are very much involved in preparing schools to be used as quarantine facilities, conducting health education, and volunteering for donation drives for health workers, patients and disadvantaged sectors.
The government needs to recognize the service of our education workers as frontliners in the delivery of education, and heed teachers’ call to be included in the first phase of the COVID-19 vaccination roll out before it’s too late.
