Education Secretary Jesli Lapus on Monday advised students coming from vacations abroad to observe self-quarantine before attending classes.

Lapus recommended students who came from trips abroad to self-quarantine for 10 days before attending classes as a precautionary measure.

"Students from abroad? Our advice is to go into self-quarantine for 10 days," Lapus said.

Lapus said there is also time for self-quarantine, especially since he expects most students who have traveled abroad in the summer break to come from private schools, which would not open classes until around the second week of June.

He said self-quarantine would be better instead of suspending classes in all schools nationwide if ever a case of A (H1N1) flu is recorded among the students.

"[Self-quarantine is better] rather than, say, I suspend classes in 43,000 schools. That's impractical," he said.

"Under the circumstances, monitoring tayo kung ano advice ng DOH (Department of Health)," he added. With a report from RG Cruz, ABS-CBN News