ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro has proposed a higher budget for the printing of self-learning modules to ensure a 1:1 student to module ratio during the third and fourth quarter of School Year 2020-2021.

Castro said that the P16.4 billion provision for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) could be realigned and used for the Education department.

The lawmaker proposed an additional maintenance and other operating expenses of P19.78 billion for Flexible Learning Options to the 2021 proposed budget, supplementary to the Department of Education’s proposed allocation of P35 billion for the production of self-learning modules.

“The prospect of DepEd having a module-sharing by third and fourth quarter is unacceptable amid the Covid19 pandemic. As front liners of the education sector, we must also be the vanguards of providing safety nets for learning continuity,” Castro said.

“To ensure that we will be able to meet the 1:1 student-to-module set ratio, we submitted a proposal for an additional appropriation for the printing of self-learning modules,” she added.

DepEd’s conservative computation of module-printing for a year is P50.4 billion while the ideal funding request is P74.6 billion.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers estimates that P51.5 billion will be needed to provide one set of modules per week for 34 weeks to 71 percent of the 22.21 million learners enrolled in public schools.