The Department of Education (DepEd) on Wednesday announced that over 1,000 schools have been nominated for the pilot implementation of face-to-face classes.
In an interview with PTV, Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones said their regional directors have already nominated 1,114 schools for the said initiative, which will be implemented from January 11 to January 23, 2011.
This is about 1.8 percent of the 61,000 schools nationwide.
Briones, however, noted only a few of the nominated schools will be able to participate in the pilot test since they would still have to get the permission of the concerned local government units, as well as the parents of the students of the said schools.
DepEd is scheduled to come out with the final list of participating schools by December 28, 2020.
Most of the nominations came from areas in Calabarzon and Eastern Visayas regions.
No nominations came from the National Capital Region (NCR), Davao, and Cotabato due large reported incidents of the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) infections in the said areas.
DepEd-NCR Director Malcolm Garma said they were not able to nominate any school for the face-to-face classes since Metro Manila remains under general community quarantine (GCQ).
“The minimum requirement to be nominated for the pilot class is [the school] should be in [an area] with a low severity cases. So this means it should be in MGCQ [modified GCQ],” Garma said.
“We know the National Capital Region will be under General Community Quarantine at least until December,” he added.