Education Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro. ARNOLD ALMACEN/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
With the current rate of enrollees to the senior high school program, the Department of Education (DepEd) expressed confidence that the country may see for the first time a “significant” drop in the number of students who do not proceed to some form of education beyond fourth year high school.
Education Secretary Armin Luistro said Friday in a press briefing that the number of students who do not proceed to some form of higher education may drop from the historical 50 percent to just around 10 percent because of the senior high school program, which was rolled out on Monday as part of the full implementation of the Aquino administration’s landmark K-12 education reform program.
He pointed out that their current data shows that they can reach an enrollment rate of 90 percent of the expected around 1.5 million Grade 10 completers.
As of 4:24 p.m., the DepEd’s learner information system has recorded total enrollment of 1,039,047 SHS students nationwide. Of this number 690,602 came from public schools, 337,511 from private schools and 10,934 from state universities and colleges (SUCs).
The same data showed that of the 10,964 schools offering the SHS program nationwide, 9,555 have already reported to the DepEd, with only 133 public schools, 1,099 private schools and 77 SUCs yet to submit their enrollment report.
“Our number of dropouts has significantly dropped. We will be at an all-time high of fourth year high school completers taking on another year or two [of schooling]. That is very important for the department since part of the anxiety and fear created by our critics is that [SHS] will create more dropouts,” Luistro said.
Luistro explained that historical data shows that for every 100 student that enters Grade 1, only 46 go on to college. From that number, only 23 would finish college.
He noted that it was because of this situation why a good number of workers, who are only high school graduates, do not even enjoy minimum wage. Through the SHS program, he said that “we have more than a million Filipinos who will have a higher level of competency two years from now, which will translate to a higher salary.”
The SHS program, which added two more years to the country’s 10-year basic education program, has four tracks: academic, technical-vocational livelihood (TVL), sports, and arts and design. To date, over 628,000 students took the academic track, more than 402,000 chose TVL, around 2,800 took up the arts and design track, while some 1,600 chose the sports track.
Luistro said that the country will get a complete picture of the number of students who enrolled in the SHS program and those who opted out of it by Aug. 31, when all of the schools have started their classes.