MANILA - Public schools will not have periodic exams this year as the education system shifts to distance learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Education said Monday.

Undersecretary for curriculum and instruction Diosdado San Antonio said written outputs and performance tasks would be used instead to assess the learning of students.

"Ang periodic test, 20 percent ng grade eh. Ang i-a-administer mo, isang araw lang. Ang feeling namin, that's very unfair to the learner, lalo na ang mga learner ngayon, iba't iba ang situwasyon," San Antonio said in an interview.

(Periodic tests account for 20 percent of the grade. You'll only administer it for a day. We feel that it's very unfair for the learner, especially now that they're in different situations.)

Students can write reflections of their readings, or record a speech explaining their understanding of a lesson to show how much they have learned, said San Antonio.

"Kapag ganyan, nilalagay sa portfolio, iniipon ang proof [of] what they can do and understand," he said.

(In this case, everything is compiled in a portfolio, as proof of what they can do and understand.)

• DepEd eyes changes in students' learning assessment

San Antonio added that doing away with periodic exams could minimize "distance cheating," where parents or guardians answer the students' activity sheets.

The undersecretary also clarified that private schools are only "strongly encouraged" but not required to adopt the policy on periodical tests for the coming school year.

In March, the DepEd no longer administered the final exams for the fourth quarter of the last school year after campuses were closed down due to the spread of COVID-19.

At the time, the DepEd came up with a formula for teachers to compute the final grade of students.