Over 17,000 schools nationwide have been nominated for face-to-face classes expansion, the Department of Education (DepEd) on Monday, April 4, said.

DepEd, in a statement, reported that 17,479 public and private schools are nominated by regional offices to join the progressive expansion phase of face-to-face classes.

This, DepEd said, indicated a “significant increase” since the start of the year.

Based on the quick count as of March 28, DepEd said that 17,054 public and 425 private schools are “ready” for the progressive expansion of face-to-face classes.

These schools, DepEd said, are those which are either fully compliant with its School Safety Assessment Tool (SSAT) or compliant but with pending local government unit concurrence.

“We are optimistic with this upward trend on the number of schools already implementing classroom-based learning,” Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones said.

Based on the data last Feb. 2, only 6,686 schools nationwide passed the SSAT. Of this number, DepEd said 6,586 were public schools and 100 were private schools.

Citing its latest report, DepEd said that three regions reported that more than half of their respective schools are nominated for return to in-person classes — including Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) with 55.9 percent, Region IX with 53.1 percent, and Region III with 51.9 percent.

DepEd said that in terms of the number of nominated schools, Central Luzon (Region III) topped the list with 2,686, followed by Eastern Visayas (Region VIII) and Central Visayas (Region VII) with 1,987 and 1,585, respectively.

Source:
courtesy of MANILA BULLETIN

by Merlina Hernando-Malipot

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