The Department of Education (DepEd) defended their stand on the sex education issue despite the Catholic church  and some parent’s strong will against it.

Education Sec. Mona Valisno explained that the implementation this coming school year will be a trial basis and will not cover all schools nationwide. There will only be 79 out of 6000 schools will be part of the pilot run, around .1% of the schools nationwide.

On the other hand, Msgr. Pedro Quitorio, Media Office Director of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said that teaching students with sex education is a suicide in the society’s morality.

Groups like National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) and Kabataan Partylist launched the “Balik Eskwela” hotline to help students and parents reach DepEd and CHED if they have issues against tuition fee hikes. Numbers to call are 352-10-54, 0922-824-07-40 and 0915-646-91-77.

CHED recently announced that 339 schools were approved to raise tuition fees. The statement gained negative reactions from both parents and students across the country.

On the other hand, Education Secretary Mona Valisno started going to schools around Metro Manila in preparation to the upcoming school opening this June.