THE SAMAHAN ng Progresibong Kabataan revived its call for an academic freeze following the warning issued by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian that the country faces a learning crisis.

The group said that the government should give priority to students’ safety and stop holding distance learning.

“As the situation with the pandemic has not improved, continuing with distance learning is foolish. The insistence on ‘uninterrupted learning’ is mere code for business-as-usual, at the expense of Filipino students and working-class families alike,” it said.

The group added that while Gatchalian expressed concern for students, learning is the least of students’ problems because they face other pressing matters.

“Simply put, no matter how important learning is, it is the least of students’ concerns when health, economic, and ecological crises are raging all at the same time and heavily affecting students and their families,” it said.

“It is his responsibility as chair of the Senate education committee to ensure free, accessible, quality, and safe education for all, but since July, all he has done is endorse a flawed blended learning system, stand idly by as a woefully inadequate education budget got passed, and ignore the evidence until it was too late,” the group added.

SPARK also called out the senator’s motivation for declaring a “learning crisis” because of the dismal showing of the Philippines in international surveys.

“The solution is not to throw students into an unsafe learning environment and hope for the best. Gatchalian’s statement shows he would much rather have a higher place in some random global survey than the safety of millions of Filipino students,” it said.