by Gian Kyra A. Morones / ILLO
August 8, 2022 – CHED hosts their first hybrid virtual kick-off ceremony for ASEAN’s 55th founding anniversary. This year, ASEAN carries Cambodia’s chairmanship 2022 theme, ASEAN A.C.T. Addressing Challenges Together.
The Assistant Secretary of ASEAN Affairs, Daniel Ramos Espiritu, opened the ceremony with his welcome remarks. In his speech, Daniel Espiritu highlighted how school closures due to the pandemic interrupted the development of education. With the sudden shift in traditional learning to online education, there had been a growing digital divide among students. By October of 2020, ASEAN leaders and experts created measures to promote digital literacy and development of transferable skills among youths and children. This is to ensure that education in the region is “equitable, inclusive and future ready”. Along with distance learning strategies, maximize e-learning platforms, open educational resources, and virtual peer exchanges in order to further improve the quality of education. He noticed that, “ASEAN remains united and strong even in the face of hardships”.
“ASEAN remains united and strong even in the face of hardships.”
The event’s guest speaker, Senator Loren Legarda, mentioned her first bill in the 19th Congress, the ‘One Tablet, One Student Program’ seek to provide public schools, universities and colleges a tablet for each student for the purpose of helping them cope with the changes in their education. In coordination with CHED, Senator Legarda helped in assisting students’ education through developing laws that provide financial assistance to their education like UniFast, Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act and the Enhanced Basic Education Program. She stressed that, “Filipinos, especially from lower income families, should know that they have such opportunities”. She also stated a problem concerning the young population as they face a disproportionate level of unemployment and under employment in which she hopes to address if given the chance. “It is imperative that we build a more resilient educational ecosystem”. She proposed to ramp up the skills development in education, sustainable development, gender equality and inclusivity.
SEAMEO Director, Dr. Ethel Agnes Pascua Valenzuela stated that “we must strengthen the implementation of open, flexible and distance learning” and provide more importance to distance learning. The new normal education paved the way to a reimagined new normal and hybrid higher education. This new development in learning and education must be valued and acknowledged in order to adjust and move forward with ease towards new learning modalities.
