Enrollees still 2.5 million short of DepEd target

MANILA, Philippines — The second week of classes ended with 26.3 million officially enrolled students in elementary and high school – 2.5 million short of the Department of Education (DepEd)’s target of 28.8 million students for school year 2023 to 2024.

As of 2 p.m. yesterday, the DepEd reported a total of 26,304,338 students enrolled in public and private kindergarten, elementary and high schools, as well as in Philippine schools overseas and under the Alternative Learning System (ALS).

Region 4-A tallied the most number of enrolled students at 3,879,738, followed by Region 3 (2,877,398), Metro Manila (2,713,999), Region 7 (2,017,317), Region 6 (1,940,400), Region 5 (1,673,156) and Region 11 (1,330,031).

A total of 288,012 students signed up under the ALS while 15,483 enrolled in Philippine schools overseas.

The DepEd said that schools would be accepting enrollees until the end of September.

In SY 2022-2023, 28.4 million students were enrolled in public and private schools.

Shortage

Meanwhile, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) has slammed the DepEd over its continued failure to address the shortage in classrooms, teachers and education support personnel.

ACT chairnan Vladimer Quetua said that based on DepEd’s own data, around 150,000 classrooms still need to be constructed to address the shortage nationwide, while 189,424 classrooms are in need of repairs as they were damaged by recent natural calamities.

Inside the classrooms, about 224,981 sets of tables and chairs are still needed, he added.

Quetua said the DepEd’s data also showed shortages of 144,789 teachers and 94,540 education support personnel (ESP).

“Though there were some preparations (for the opening of classes)done during the Brigada Eskwela, these were not significant to address the huge backlogs. The preparations were focused on minor repairs which teachers previously used to do using donations and money from their own pockets,” Quetua said in Filipino.

“Though there are funds allocated for the construction and repair of classrooms as well as for hiring of additional teachers and ESP, the DepEd was not able to maximize these funds. Its own data showed that there are huge backlogs in terms of classroom construction and repairs, creation of new teaching positions and filling in vacant items. All that the DepEd was able to do was the removal of visual aids inside the classroom,” Quetua said.

He also slammed the DepEd’s launch of the “MATATAG” revised curriculum for Kindergarten to Grade 10, set to be implemented in phases in select schools starting this year.

He said the drafting of the revised curriculum did not undergo any democratic and comprehensive consultations with the teachers on the ground.

“The DepEd did not even conduct a comprehensive learning assessment to identify the learning gaps which should be the bases of revisions under the new curriculum,” he said.

“For us, this (revised curriculum)was rushed and might even worsen the learning crisis that the country is facing. The DepEd did not learn anything from the lapses committed during the drafting of the current K-12 curriculum,” he added.