DepEd's goal of student enrollees attained, millions left out

With over 22 million students currently enrolled in both public and private schools, the Department of Education (DepEd) has reached its target number of enrollees in public and private schools less than a month before the next school year begins, even as millions of students stand to be left out.

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DepEd has said it is targeting at least 80 percent of last year’s figure of 27.7 million, or 22.16 million students.

National enrollment data from DepEd as Wednesday, July 29, showed that the total number of enrollees for SY 2020-2021 has reached 22, 233, 806 nationwide for Kindergarten to Grade 12, including Alternative Learning System (ALS) and non-graded learners with disabilities.

Most or 20,841,279 million learners have registered in public basic educational institutions, while 1,359,984 million have enrolled in private institutions

DepEd’s latest data showed that there are 1, 529, 132 students enrolled in Kindergarten; 10, 916, 979 in Elementary; 6, 990, 979 in JHS; and 2, 427, 104 in SHS. There are also 58, 141 learners with disabilities who registered along with 312, 361 under the ALS.

The highest number of enrollees were recorded from Region IV-A with over three million followed by Region III with 2.31 million and National Capital Region (NCR) with 2.24 million.

The department earlier admitted that it would not be able to hit its initial target of nearly 28 million enrollees this school year. 

In its latest data, it leaves out more than 5 million children who failed to enroll this school year, which is a concern by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers.

The teachers' group has criticized DepEd for pushing through with its schedule to start the school year despite having no

plans for the millions of children who failed to enroll, and many families have expressed difficulties in coping with the changes due to financial and other reasons.

Under the blended education system, delivery of lessons could be done through the use of DepEd’s online portal, television, radio and learning modules in digital or printed packets. A DepEd official cited the digital and printed packets as the most preferred module so far. Academic year 2020 to 2021 will formally start on August 24 as the DepEd sees no reason to further delay school opening.