MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Education (DepEd) on Thursday, April 4, reiterated that school heads have the power to suspend in-person classes and order a shift to remote learning amid the extreme heat.

“[The] DepEd has given the school heads the authority and discretion to suspend the conduct of in-person classes and shift to alternative delivery modes (ADM) in cases of extreme heat and other calamities that may compromise the health and safety of learners, teachers, and non-teaching personnel,” the agency said.

The agency said that it was best that school heads decide on in-person class suspension for “timely response and interventions to ensure the welfare of learners and personnel.”

The education department oversees some 47,000 public schools in the country.

The guidelines on class suspension were contained in Department Order 037 issued in 2022. In most cases, class suspensions are announced by respective local government units. This week, several areas in the country have suspended in-person classes due to high heat index.

Heat index is measured using the air temperature and the relative humidity in a place at a given time. It is also called the feels-like temperature, and it typically soars during the Philippines’ warm and dry season from March to May.

In response to extreme heat, the DepEd earlier approved a gradual return to the old academic calendar, where students would have a break from April to May, although opponents of the proposal view this as a stopgap measure.

Critics say the problem is not really the academic calendar, but the classrooms, which are not built to withstand extreme heat in the Philippines, a tropical country.

The school opening in the Philippines was moved to October, instead of June, in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and remote learning was implemented. In the succeeding years, it was moved to August.

The return to the old academic calendar was triggered by public clamor because the summer months of April and May are not conducive to learning. In 2023, a hundred students from the Gulod National High School Mamatid Extension in Cabuyao, Laguna, were hospitalized due to dehydration after a surprise fire drill. – Rappler.com