Facing the new school year with a new phase of challenges

Each new school year brings with it a different set of hopes, goals – and in these tumultuous times – challenges that were unheard of in past school years. This academic year, like last year, is starting in a peak of a pandemic, which has forced the Department of Education (DepEd) to once again implement a blended or distance learning setup.

This kind of learning is the best that the DepEd can come up with. Students learn their lessons via multiple learning delivery modalities – via print, online, television, or radio. A combination of any two or more modalities constitutes “blended learning.”

Even with the setup, the DepEd has said it was “encouraged” to see the rise in the number of enrollees. In fact, the agency revealed that the number of students who enrolled for school year 20212022 has breached the 24 million mark based on the first day of classes in public schools.