WITH the enhanced community quarantine extended for another week, a group of students urged school administrators to suspend online classes in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

Rise for Education Alliance-University of the Philippines Diliman chapter said that students should be given a break to ease the burden of online learning.

“Students should be able to turn in their submissions until the end of the semester with no penalties. This is to ease the academic burden brought about by the shortened semester and allow students to catch up with their remaining workloads,” R4E-UPD said in a letter addressed to Chancellor Fidel Nemenzo.

The alliance also asked the UP administration to remove “stringent deadlines” for the current semester.

The UP Los Baños University Student Council, on the other hand, said that students and faculty members are struggling from attending to their academic requirements with the continuous implementation of distance learning.

“We request to reduce the course requirements to the essentials. Since a week has passed that the students were not given deadlines, we suggest recalibrating the requirements that were supposed to be submitted last week and the requirements that are due this week to prevent them from piling,” the group said.

Meanwhile, student groups in the Polytechnic University of the Philippines appealed to the school’s administrators to extend their academic break.

Palace Spokesman Harry Roque earlier said that online classes will continue in areas placed under ECQ.

Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal will remain under the strictest community quarantine status from April 5 to April 11.