THE SAMAHAN ng Progresibong Kabataan slammed the Department of Education for its plan to extend distance learning until the next school year given the surge in Covid19 cases.

“The DepEd proposal to extend blended learning without addressing the gaps we have been pointing out for over a year is plain stupidity and will achieve nothing but the prolonging of our hardships,” Justin Dizon, the group’s spokesperson for junior and senior high school affairs, said.

Education Secretary Leonor Briones earlier said that her department is planning for several levels as the situation remains uncertain.

The group questioned why DepEd implemented multi-level planning only now when students have been suffering from the department’s haphazard implementation of distance learning.

“This should have been done last year. All they did then was to insist that ‘we are ready’ and later on claim victory,” it said.

“There is no logic in the multiple scenario planning being done by the DepEd when it has remained silent on the most basic of all antidotes to the problems that have risen under an education scheme in the time of a pandemic, the free, mass vaccination of all students,” Dizon said.

The group challenged Briones to address calls for the mass vaccination of students.