VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Sara Duterte-Carpio flip flops on ‘mandatory’ face-to-face classes by November

Explaining her department’s accomplishments in the first 100 days of  the Marcos administration, Education Secretary Sara Duterte-Carpio has walked back on her order mandating full face-to-face classes in public and private schools by this November.

The order, however, exempts students enrolled in home schools, night high schools, open high schools, and under the following DepEd programs:

a. Instructional Management by Parents, Community, and Teachers, a peer-led system grouping students in “learning families” preferably within their neighborhood. A teacher and a parent act as “instructional supervisor[s]” under this setup, supporting and monitoring learning families as they go through their modules.

b. Modified In-School Off-School Approach, which aims to address classroom congestion. In this system, half of a class with  50 students attend school on-site while the others learn virtually.  This arrangement rotates periodically throughout the school year.

BACKSTORY

DepEd’s Alternative Delivery Modes are meant to address the complex situations of learners who are “at risk of dropping out, children and youth who are out of school, adults who failed to finish basic education, learners with special needs, learners with extreme difficulty in accessing schools or those who attend overpopulated schools, and learners in emergency situations.”

During the opening of classes last Aug. 22, Duterte-Carpio said that while DepEd is not minimizing the challenges and risks that the coronavirus 2019 pandemic poses, the country “can no longer make COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to keep children from schools.”

Editor’s note: This fact check was updated on Oct. 14, 2022 to include the video fact check.