Year 2 of remote learning starts

UNICEF official fears worsening crisis

Classrooms in the country were silent yesterday as millions of school children hunkered down at home for a second year of remote lessons that experts fear will worsen an educational “crisis.”

While nearly every country in the world has partially or fully reopened schools to in-person classes, the Philippines has kept them closed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the United Nations says.

President Duterte has so far rejected proposals for a pilot reopening of primary and secondary schools for fear children could catch COVID-19 and infect elderly relatives.

“I want to go to school,” seven-year-old Kylie Larrobis told AFP, complaining she cannot read after a year of online kindergarten in the tiny slum apartment in Manila she shares with six people. “I don’t know what a classroom looks like – I’ve never seen one.”

Larrobis, who enters first grade this year, cries in frustration when she cannot understand her online lessons, which she follows on a smartphone, said her mother, Jessielyn Genel.

Her misery is compounded by a ban on children playing outdoors.

“What is happening is not good,” said Genel, who opposed a return to in-person classes while the Delta variant ripped through the country.

A “blended learning” program involving online classes, printed materials and lessons broadcast on television and social media was launched last October.