THE DEPARTMENT of Education plans to hold the pilot testing of limited face-to-face classes in at least 500 schools nationwide.

“We are looking at 500 schools nationwide or about 50 schools as participants per region, so the number of schools that will participate in the pilot testing of face-to-face interaction will be lesser,” Alain Del Pascua, DepEd Undersecretary for Administration, said.

“For now, this proposal covers all schools nationwide except in Metro Manila because the cases of Covid19 infections remain high. If approved, we will undertake the pilot testing of the face-to-face interaction but on a very small scale,” he added.

The pilot testing was suspended because of President Rodrigo Duterte’s directive that there will be no face-to-face classes until a Covid19 vaccine is available.

Del Pascua said DepEd had been actively recommending the resumption of face-to-face interaction among learners and teachers.

He said that the implementation of the pilot testing aimed to gather data on how face-to-face interaction will be conducted.

“We also wanted to see what will be the possible problems but this was disapproved because there were so many schools that will participate in the pilot face-to-face interaction,” he said.