The New York Times News August 22, 2022

Philippines Returns to School, Ending One of World’s Longest Shutdowns

Millions of students throughout the Philippines headed to school on Monday as in-person classes began to fully
restart for the first time in more than two years, ending one of the world’s longest pandemic-related shutdowns in a
school system already plagued by severe underinvestment.

“We could no longer afford to delay the education of young Filipinos,” said Vice President Sara Duterte, who is also
the education secretary, as she toured schools in the town of Dinalupihan, about 40 miles northwest of Manila.

Even before the pandemic, the Philippines had among the world’s largest education gaps, with more than 90 percent
of students unable to read and comprehend simple texts by age 10, according to the World Bank.

Schools in the Philippines have long suffered from shortages of classrooms and teachers, whose pay is low, leaving
the vast numbers of poor children who cannot afford private schools and rely on the public system with inadequate
teaching.

Now, after losing more than two years of in-person instruction, schools face the monumental challenge of educating
many students who have fallen even further behind.

Though the Philippines offered online instruction during the pandemic, many students lacked access to computers or
internet connections, and overburdened parents often found it hard to keep tabs on their children’s remote learning.

In some cases, students’ already tenuous connection to school may have been severed entirely after so long away.

In many countries, as the shortcomings of online learning became increasingly well documented — especially for
more disadvantaged students — governments elected to send children back to classrooms even as the coronavirus
continued to circulate widely.

A World Bank report that examined 35 studies from 20 countries concluded that the longer schools remained closed,
the more ground students lost, with potentially far-reaching consequences.

“The inequality in learning between advantaged and disadvantaged groups is likely to grow,” the report said, “posing
a significant challenge to ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity.”

Many children simply dropped out. In Uganda, for example, one in 10 students did not report back for classes when
they resumed in January after what was one of the world’s longest shutdowns, according to UNICEF.

In the Philippines, government officials and parents were hesitant to reopen classrooms, fearing that schoolchildren
could bring the virus back to homes crowded with multiple generations of family members and overtax an already
creaky health care system.

Starting in late 2021, the government began to experiment with conducting in-person classes in about 300 schools,
but has now begun expanding it to cover all primary and secondary schools.

Currently only some schools are in-person all five weekdays; by November, all of the country’s roughly 47,000
schools will be.

To make it easier for children to get their shots, local health officials were encouraged to set up satellite vaccination
sites at schools. However, this was not mandated by the government at the national level. Vaccinations remain purely
voluntary, and widespread hesitancy is a problem.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who last month ruled out more economically crippling lockdowns amid the pandemic,
on Monday stressed that learning was more effective if classes were done physically in schools, but also called on
the public to observe proper health protocols.

Ms. Rogas, 43, said her children had been vaccinated, but she still worried. “You never know about this virus, which
mutates every so often,” she said.

For now, she said, they were just happy to return to school. “For two years, they only saw their friends and
classmates on small screens, so they are excited to interact with them.”