First COVID-19, now heat: Online schooling returns to the Philippines

The Philippines had one of the world’s longest school shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted the education gap faced by children from low-income families without computers or sufficient internet access.

But with most public schools in the country of 115 million people poorly equipped to deal with soaring temperatures and other extreme weather, online classes have become the safest option during the current heatwaves, teachers and unions say.

In public schools in Metro Manila, the capital region, a survey of more than 8,000 teachers last month showed 87 per cent of students had suffered from heat-related conditions.

More than three-quarters of teachers described the heat as “unbearable” in the survey conducted by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers of the Philippines – National Capital Region (ACT-NCR), a teaching association.

Nearly half or 46 per cent of teachers said classrooms have only one or two electric fans, highlighting inadequate ventilation measures to deal with rising temperatures.

“The heat had tremendous impacts on children. Some students even collapsed inside classrooms. Teachers suffered from the heat, too, but often they would prioritise their students’ health inside classrooms,” Ruby Bernardo, spokesperson of ACT-NCR, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.