DepED Bohol pleads to LGUS, 

“Employ learning facilitators” 

CORTES Bohol August 15 (PIA) – Faced with the reality that it might take long before the Department of Education (DepED) can allow face-to-face classes, facilitating learners progress in their home-tasked learning sessions has opened up authorities’ eyes on the impossible: how would a teacher be able to check on the individual competencies of learners enough for them to proceed to the next module? 

Over this, DepED Bohol Division through the Assistant Division Superintendent Dr. Casiana Caberte has pleaded to their local government unit partners to extend some more help in hiring ‘learning facilitators,’ who could go around and sit with pupils or students who have been identified as having no one to help them in working out the weekly modules. 

At the Kapihan sa PIA a week ago, Dr. Caberte explained that with students and pupils scattered in different locations, it is impossible for the teacher to visit each one of those who have no parents or siblings to help them in the lessons. 

“Due to work, there are parents who would not have time to sit with the child, as there are also kids who are left to the care of the grandparents with the parents working or are far from home, and there are also siblings that could not properly elucidate on the lessons in the module, admits Dr. Caberte, who knew all this from the Learner Enrolment Survey Form the DepED sent out months ago. 

Moreover, independent surveys also showed that there are parents who are helpless in facilitating the “new lessons,” apart from the fact that they could hardly keep the child focused, that patience are stretched and the study ends in failure. 

Here, enter the Division-proposed locally funded learning facilitators, Dr Caberte starts to explain. 

By learning facilitators, DepED Bohol means those who have finished the Bachelors course in Education but have not been hired yet, they have been trained to do exactly the same tasks needed by the learners who have no one to guide them with the printed modules. 

These people could be hired by the LGUs to help us go to and check on specific students who could not find any help at home in the modules, she pressed on. 

The DepED pleading however is one which they could only propose, knowing how much the LGUs have helped them in the printing of the modules which they distributed to each learner. 

The modules were not part of the DepED budget, and by realigning some funds, they were only able to fund some 25% of the totality of the modules that need to be produced and delivered to the learners every week, she said. 

While Distance Learning Modality keeps students and pupils from the schools as mass gatherings continue to be banned, the blended distance learning modality, the one which the local DepED sees as the most appropriate in most cases, also presents other huge challenges. 

Blended learning means a student will get a weekly printed learning module, its production was not in any DepED allocation. 

At the heels of the rescheduling of the opening of classes, nothing much can change on the problem, observers said. 

With the national government funds bleeding dry now, the DepED can only hope for creative partnerships to deliver effectively the lessons in times of blended distance learning. 

While the rescheduling of classes buying the government some time, the relief in the logistical limitation of the department is not expected to be solved until legislators pass a new appropriation, which might take some time and fiscal backing from the same government. 

Over this, and totally unprepared in the decision to go Distance Learning with the threat of the transmission of the corona virus disease still eminent, this might just be the moment Filipinos can prove that indeed, it would take an entire community to fully educate a child. (rahchiu/PIA-7/Bohol) 

ANOTHER CALL FOR HELP. DepED Bohol’s Dr. Casiana Caberte has pleaded LGU partners once again to help them reach out to each learner in the homes by using Education graduates to help facilitate the learning of a pupil or student who has no one to help in the performance of activities and understanding the printed modules as DepED adopts blended distance learning. This after LGUs have helped DepED in producing the printed modules for every student. (rahchiu/PIA-7/Bohol)