DepEd bares 1.2 million enrollment drop for SY 2025-2026

MANILA, Philippines — Education Secretary Sonny Angara reported a five-percent drop in total enrollment for School Year 2025-2026, with enrollees numbering only 24.9 million compared to last year’s 27 million.

Angara said that the Department of Education (DepEd) is still determining the cause of the drop in enrollment, adding that it is still not a cause for concern.

“It is not yet (a cause for concern), but we are really seeing tapering off. We are looking at the data. It’s something we will seek to understand going forward,” he said.

During the deliberations on the proposed P928.52-billion budget of the DepEd for 2026, ACT Teachers party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio noted a big decrease in school enrollment this 2025.

“The population is growing. How come there is tapering off?” Tinio asked.

Based on the presentation of Angara, the total enrollment for kindergarten for this year reached 1.8 million compared to 1.7 million last year; elementary, 11.6 million compared to 12.4 million last year; junior high school, 7.5 million compared to 7.46 million last year, and senior high school, 3.6 million compared to 3.9 million last year.

“It is a reporting issue. Number one, there are late enrollees. Number two, even if the students are enrolled, the encoding is late. Even into September, October, we are expecting this number to increase,” Angara said.

Tinio has noted that the biggest drop in enrollment was in elementary with almost one million decrease.

“Maybe we will study better. I don’t want to venture any guesses, it could be an economic factor, it could be a lot of factors,” Angara added.

Meanwhile, he said that the proposed budget of the DepEd for 2026 aims to fund nearly 33,000 new teacher items; 11,000 Administrative Officer II positions; 5,000 lower-level administrative staff that will aid teachers with program implementation; 10,000 school counselor positions to address student well-being, and nearly 243,000 laptops for teachers to equip them for the digital age.

“Our single biggest investment is in our teachers, with over P48 billion. We are hiring thousands of new personnel, including administrative officers and school counselors, specifically to unburden our school heads and teachers from non-teaching tasks,” Angara said.

He added that the DepEd will equip the teachers with modern instruction, allocating P11 billion for textbooks and over P9 billion for laptops.

He said the DepEd is also allocating over P9 billion to ensure school infrastructure is safe and resilient against natural disasters.

“Our goal is not just to build more, but to build stronger. Beyond infrastructure, we are investing over P121 billion in direct support for our schools and learners,” Angara said.

Angara said the DepEd will also allocate P11.8 billion for the School-Based Feeding Program to ensure student health, and more than P40 billion for voucher programs to ensure educational access.

Angara also thanked the members of the House of Representatives for their support for additional funding for the DepEd as he defended the agency’s 2026 P928.52-billion proposed budget before the committee on appropriations.

Angara said the P928.52-billion budget of the DepEd under the National Expenditure Program (NEP) represents an 18.9-percent increase compared to the agency’s 2025 budget, describing this as the “most significant increase in recent years.”

Angara said the DepEd has been doubling its efforts to improve the utilization of funds for 2024 under continuing appropriations.

He highlighted that out of the 56 percent of unused budget last year, 43.2 percent has already been appropriated by the agency in 2025.

No support for 4Ps

The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) said that the Commission on Higher Education’s Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) failed to benefit many Pantawid ng Pamilyang Pilipino Program Senior High School graduates.

EDCOM 2 executive director Karol Mark Yee noted Republic Act 10931 established the Tertiary Education Subsidy to provide financial support to underprivileged Filipino students pursuing higher education.

Yee said while the law intended to support the poorest, the TES system saw a growing number of recipients from the PNSL category or those studying in private institutions in areas without public colleges.

According to Yee, the proportion of poorest of the poor beneficiaries under the TES program saw a significant decline, from 75 percent in 2018 to just 23 percent in 2023.

Yee said in contrast, the percentage of TES grantees from the PNSL category rose from 26 percent in 2018 to 69 percent in 2022.

Yee noted that EDCOM 2 pushed for a special provision in the 2024 national budget to ensure that the TES program would explicitly prioritize the poorest students, which resulted in a significant increase in the share of TES grantees from the poorest households.

At the same time, EDCOM 2 expressed concern on the drastic reduction in subsidies for TES beneficiaries from P60,000 to P13,000.

EDCOM 2 added that beneficiaries in State Universities and Colleges and Local Universities and Colleges areas without SUCs or LUCs have seen their subsidy drop from P20,000 to P10,000 per semester.

Yee also noted that while students from low-income families might aspire to college, the current TES subsidy amount effectively limits their options, making teacher education the only financially viable course because its tuition fee is the only one the subsidy can cover, raising questions about the intention of the policy and the genuine choice students have in pursuing their desired courses.

Yee added that the Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education failed to do its responsibilities.