SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian stressed the potential of social media platforms for the continuous delivery of education especially in the face of shocks like the Covid19 pandemic, amid efforts to make the basic education sector more resilient and innovative.

Gatchalian identified opportunities for social media in education and shared lessons learned from the Covid19 pandemic.

The senator cited as example Valenzuela Live, which utilized Facebook and YouTube as a platform for learning delivery and Valenzuela’s Nanay-Teacher Program which used Facebook groups as alternative learning management systems.

To help struggling learners, Gatchalian recalled that the local government of Valenzuela distributed 23,500 tablets to the city’s poorest learners.

He stressed the need for better investments in internet infrastructure nationwide. The senator also filed measures such as the Digital Transformation in Basic Education Act or Senate Bill 383 and the One Learner, One Laptop Act or the Senate Bill 474.

“There’s an urgent need to narrow the digital divide as it hits hardest on poor learners,” Gatchalian said.

He cited the World Bank Philippines’ 2020 survey which showed that 60 percent of the poorest households have no access to the internet.

The survey also revealed that 98 percent of learners from these households chose printed self-learning modules as the primary mode of learning.

According to the Digital Report 2022 on the Philippines, there were 92.05 million social media users in the Philippines at the start of 2022, which was equivalent to 82.4 percent of the total population.

Based on Meta’s data, there were 83.85 million Facebook users in the Philippines at the start of 2022 and among Facebook users, 42 percent are aged 13-24 and belong to student age groups.

“That’s where social media can be used for education because half of our population between ages 13-24 are on Facebook. This is where the opportunity comes in of using Facebook or social media to reach out to those students,” Gatchalian said.