MANILA, Philippines–The experimental busing system ferrying pupils from a crammed campus to another with rooms to spare has yet to ease congestion in one of Valenzuela City’s smallest public schools.
As education officials in Metro Manila look for new ways to cope with overcrowding, Valenzuela schools division superintendent Wilfredo Cabral explained that his office gave the scheme a try because the parents would not enroll their children to less congested public schools nearby.
For the second day of class on Tuesday, Cabral oversaw the noontime transfer of 140 Grade 5 pupils from Malinta Elementary School-Pinalagad Annex to their “new” school, Caruhatan West.
Under the hot sun, the pupils lined up at the school gate waiting to board the white vans that would make the 10-minute trip to the other school, which happened to have three classrooms to spare.
The six vans being used are marked with the Department of Education (DepEd) logo, the name of the school and that of a congressman who donated the vehicles. The city government has agreed to shoulder the fuel cost as well as the drivers’ salaries.
Dozens of other pupils taking the afternoon shift crowded the covered court and the area just outside the gate, waiting for the morning-shift pupils to vacate the rooms.
“If we do not do this (bus system), would they prefer this congestion?” Cabral said.
Malinta–Pinalagad Annex has only nine classrooms but its student population for the new school year ballooned to 1,043. Like the majority of schools in Metro Manila, it holds two class shifts a day to accommodate as many pupils as possible. Classrooms measuring 6 meters by 5 meters and designed for only 30 pupils each end up packing in 47 to 51 students.
“There’s no more room. The teachers will have a big headache if the enrollment goes any higher,” Cabral said.
Three teachers from Malinta–Pinalagad Annex were also reassigned to Caruhatan West.
Though the two schools are quite near each other, Cabral said the daily tricycle fare may be dissuading parents of Malinta pupils from transferring them to Caruhatan West.
Without remedies like the busing scheme, “my fear is that they might not send their children to school anymore or they might complain that we are not accepting their children,” he said.