DepEd forecasts more student transferees in public schools
The Department of Education (DepEd) said that more parents may opt to transfer their children to public schools due to rising fuel prices and the ongoing energy crisis.
“One of our forecasts for the… cost of living and energy crisis, more parents will pull their kids out of private schools and put them in public schools again,” DepEd Undersecretary for Strategic Management Ronald U. Mendoza said in a forum on Wednesday.
“They are no longer able to pay for the private school tuition fee. We saw this during the pandemic,” he added.
Over 800 private schools shut down operations for School Year (SY) 2020-2021 due to the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. The schools cited a low number of enrollees, unstable financial status, and failure to guarantee the safety of students or school personnel as their reasons for the temporary closure.
In the same academic year, a quarter-million students moved from private to public schools, as many parents lost their jobs overseas. The shift among students caused the enrollment in public schools to reach 99.85%, or 22.31 million, while private schools recorded 48.32%, or 2.08 million, enrollees.
If the same scenario were to happen again, Mr. Mendoza noted that the current classroom inventory would not be able to accommodate all students and would further congest schools.
“I could not build classrooms fast enough to absorb the ones who are leaving, and then you will see private schools with 15 kids for a room of 40 – that’s not healthy either,” he said.
“Losing classrooms and losing schools right now through closure or other things is going to put more and more social burden on us in the future,” he added.
As of January, the Education department reported a nationwide classroom gap of 144,000.
To further help the private sector sustain operations amid the crisis, DepEd offered expanded subsidies to 2.4 million learners in private schools for SY 2026-2027.
About 990,000 junior high school students and 1.47 million senior high school students will receive assistance under the Educational Service Contracting (ESC) program and the Senior High School Voucher Program (SHS-VP), respectively.
Last Tuesday, the Senate also approved on third and final reading a proposed measure seeking to institutionalize a nationwide private education voucher program.
Under the bill, students from congested public schools may transfer to private schools with available classroom capacity through an education voucher.
“We will support the private schools to the extent that we have the voucher expansion,” Mr. Mendoza said. “DepEd will be good at standardizing things for equity; private schools will be good at pushing the envelope, innovating faster than DepEd ever could.”
“A stronger DepEd produces a stronger middle class, which will eventually pay for that higher quality or more agile private school,” he added. — Almira Louise S. Martinez
