CLASSES RESUME | Teachers’ group says there are armchair shortage in Manila school, other classrooms

August 23, 2022 , 10:11 PM

By Clarist Zablan

(August 23, 2022) – Many schools in the capital and other provinces lacked school desks and armchairs, a progressive teachers’ group said on Tuesday, disputing a statement from a local division of the education department that assailed a media report on the shortage.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) said some of the teachers from Jose Abad Santos High School told them some classes do not have enough chairs for students, while other classrooms had dilapidated chairs.

The school head even had to resort to borrowing chairs from other schools, they said.

“Hindi kailangan na maging defensive ang ating mga guro at local education officials sa usapin ng mga kakulangan sa sistema ng edukasyon dahil ito ang malaganap na katotohanan,” ACT chairman Vladimer Quetua said in a press release.

Earlier, the Office of the Superintendent of Manila’s Division of City Schools (DCS) disputed a report from Inquirer on the armchair shortage in the school, which noted that there were students in one of the classrooms that had to sit on the floor on the first day of the class due to a lack of chairs.

Another classroom had students sharing tables.

The Inquirer report also said the school’s principal Edna Reyes said the armchairs are already enough for the student population, and the issue was caused by miscommunication with janitors and a “lack of initiative” from teachers to address the lack of chairs in their classrooms.

DCS Manila said one of the classroms shown in the report only asked the students to sit on the floor for a group activity for “orientation and psychosocial support tasks.”

Quetua said the situation in Jose Abad Santos High School is not an isolated case, as they have received multiple reports on classrooms lacking armchairs and desks in La Union, Bataan, Tarlac, Camarines Norte, Iloilo, Panay, Cebu City and Davao City.

“In the spirit of accountability, the Department of Education should report on how many arm chairs and desks it has procured in recent years to prepare for the resumption of face-to-face classes,” he said.

Teachers’ groups have been sounding the alarm on classroom shortage ahead of the first day of School Year 2022-23, raising concerns that this will jeopardize social distancing protocols needed to prevent a surge in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infections.

Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte-Carpio has hailed the reopening of classes as a “victory for basic education.”

(MM)

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