DepEd proposes ending School Year 2024-2025 in March

The Department of Education (DepEd) on Tuesday said it has proposed to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ending the School Year 2024-2025 in March 2025 amid clamor for the immediate return to the April-May school break.

“The department has already submitted a letter to the Office of the President, presenting other options, including a more aggressive alternative of ending SY 2024-2025 in March,” DepEd Assistant Secretary Francis Bringas said during the hearing of the Senate committee on basic education.

“We respectfully appeal to the committee to allow the President time to study the options carefully. DepEd commits to implement this decision accordingly,” he added.

DepEd previously said that it would take at least three years before the school break returns to April-May.

According to Bringas, ending the school year in March 2025 would decrease the school calendar to 165 days.

“We have a Republic Act that would tell us that the minimum would be 180 up to 220 days, that is the current Republic Act that we have. But our option could be to count some days as alternative delivery mode, which are not necessarily in-person classes,” he said.

Meanwhile, he said the proposal would affect the school break of teachers as well as learners.

“Because if they will end March 31, we will start in June. April, May, they would still have that break but medyo siksik. Magiging siksik 'yung ating pagtackle ng mga competencies natin in the shorter number of days,” he said.  

For his part, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said he believed the government should “take the aggressive approach.”

“Because we cannot predict things eh. Next year, it can be La Niña, it can be El Niño again. It’s very difficult. Weather, it’s like that eh, it’s hard to predict. But what’s certain is we need to revert back already to the old calendar,” the senator said.

Meanwhile, Bringas said that due to extreme heat, a total of 7,605 schools nationwide have suspended in-person classes from April 1 to April 26, affecting almost 7 million learners.

He said that DepEd has previously given schools the authority to shift to alternative delivery modes.

“This year we have reiterated this directive to the field where we gave our school heads the authority to shift to alternative delivery modes in the absence of suspensions coming from the local government units,” he said.

State weather bureau PAGASA had said the heat may continue until the middle of May.—AOL, GMA Integrated News