THE MILITANT teachers’ group Alliance of Concerned Teachers has slammed the Department of Education for saying that online classes may extend up to eight hours in order to complete the required number of school days as provided by the law.

The group called on the agency to ‘do better’ by attuning measures to ‘harsh realities’ confronting its constituents.

“After risking teachers’ safety in its failed bid to prepare the school opening and further delaying the youth’s enjoyment of their right to education, DepEd is now set to make us suffer the consequences of government ineptitude and abandonment of education by subjecting us to a physically, mentally, and financially draining eight-hour online class. With the unrelenting health and economic crises, this is just inhumane of DepEd,” Raymond Basilio, the group’s secretary general, said in a statement.

ACT noted a 2018 study from the National Institutes of Health where experts found that longer screen time had adverse effects on children’s overall development, and that it also “narrows their focus of interest and limits their other means of exploration and learning,” quoted Basilio.

Basilio raised that this becomes even more disturbing given present ‘limiting conditions’ for interaction not just between teachers and students, but even among learners, which is crucial in the molding of well-rounded individuals.

“Not only will an eight-hour class be extremely exhausting for both teachers and learners, thus directly impacting education quality—not to mention detrimental to their health—but it will also be inaccessible to more learners and even educators. How can families afford to sustain such long hours of internet connectivity when more and more Filipinos are losing jobs? Even those who can once afford costly internet access may not be able to do so for very long. Either DepEd missed the global economic recession or they simply don’t care,” Basilio said.

ACT cited a recent SWS survey revealing a historic 45.5 percent adult joblessness as a major factor to the success and sustainability of an already inaccessible remote learning modality for a ‘technologically backward, third-world country like ours’.

The group added that teachers can only be given a maximum of six hours teaching time, while the remaining two hours is to be spent on other teaching-related activities such as preparation of lesson plans, activities, checking of outputs, research, training, among others. Any exigencies for longer instruction time shall be compensated with regular hourly rate plus a 25 percent premium on the same.

“Since we will still need to do the rest of our tasks after the 8-hour online class, we’ll essentially be rendering overtime for the rest of the school year. Our learners who themselves are struggling amid the pandemic will also be spent with classes and other learning exercises. We can almost guarantee that more students and teachers alike will drop out before the school year ends,” Basilio said.

The group urged DepEd and the Duterte government to closely work on resolving the major roadblocks to education at this time of crisis.

Before October 5, ACT expects that President Duterte has decisively backed school opening with sufficient resources and DepEd has designed a ‘new, grounded’ program for all 27 million learners.