Sen. Win Gatchalian —Senate PRIB
More than 542,000 senior high school students all over the country are still without regular classrooms due to the ineffective implementation of the government’s subsidy program for poor learners, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian said on Saturday.
According to Gatchalian, the problem of overcrowding in public schools persisted as the Department of Education (DepEd) failed to create an efficient policy in carrying out the Senior High School Voucher Program.
The program, he pointed out, should have put in place an “effective targeting mechanism” to ensure that only poor students would benefit from it.
As projected, the subsidy, which is given to the intended beneficiaries in the form of vouchers, would help lessen the enrollees in public schools by allowing students to use the financial assistance in paying for their tuition fees in private schools.
“For me, it’s a waste that we don’t solve the problem of [public school] congestion because we are randomly giving the vouchers to students,” said Gatchalian, who chairs the Senate committee on basic education.
“That is why it is important that we have a mechanism for identifying congested areas and then allocating vouchers to those congested areas,” he added.
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As mandated by Republic Act No. 8545, or the Expanded Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education Act, only poor students should benefit from the program, the senator reiterated.
He observed that the regions with the most number of private schools that participated in the voucher program “do not have the most number of congested schools.”
For example, he said, while Central Visayas topped the regions with overcrowded schools, most of the private educational institutions that received vouchers were in Calabarzon region.
Gatchalian said the education subsidy program would also have addressed the existence of “aisle learners”—or students who can no longer be accommodated in classrooms—in state-owned senior high schools.