Voucher scheme: Poor students’ lifeline to better education

Krisha Ciasico grew up attending public schools, where classrooms were always filled to the brim and computers had to be shared with a classmate or two.

So when the Department of Education (DepEd) last year offered the senior high school (SHS) voucher program to help subsidize Grade 10 finishers who wanted to pursue SHS education in private schools, Ciasico grabbed the opportunity.

The 17-year-old enrolled at STI College in Ortigas-Cainta—a 30-minute ride from her home in Binangonan, Rizal—in accountancy, business and management (ABM).

STI is one of more than 4,500 private schools offering SHS, the last component of the K-12 basic reform program that was rolled out in June 2016.

Ciasico, who will enter Grade 12 this school year, said it was the nearest private institution that offered the ABM academic strand.

“Because all my life I went to a public school, I wanted to try studying at a private school and experience its facilities,” she told the Inquirer in an interview.

Her parents agreed because she was automatically qualified to receive a voucher subsidy worth P17,500 for two successive years and was also eligible for a scholarship, having finished Grade 10 at the top of her class.

Ciasico only has to pay for other expenses, such as books, educational tours and school events.

“If not for the voucher and the scholarship, never in my life would I study in a private school,” she said, noting that what her father earns from occasional carpentry work was not enough to send two children to school.

There were other 1,499 recipients of the SHS voucher program in Ciasico’s school. In all, 1,740 students had enrolled last year in the programs offered there: science, technology, engineering and mathematics; general academic; IT in mobile app and web development; hotel operations, tourism operations, restaurant and bar operations and culinary arts.

For many poor students like Ciasico, the program is a lifeline to a better education, providing beneficiaries a DepEd subsidy ranging from P8,750 to P22,500.

“Not all public high schools offer all four tracks of the SHS program. The tracks offered in schools depend on the requirement of the community, province and the region,” Undersecretary Jesus Mateo explained.

The SHS program has four tracks: academic, technical-vocational-livelihood, sports and arts & design.

The DepEd conceived the program to assist Grade 10 finishers to pursue a specific track not offered by their current school, Mateo said.

Private junior high finishers may apply for the subsidy—up to 80 percent of the voucher amount.

Applications are processed early in the year, or at the close of the previous school year, not at the opening of classes.

Contrary to common misconceptions, the subsidy is neither given directly to students in cash nor does it shoulder the entire cost of tuition and other school expenses.

The voucher only allows beneficiaries to claim a “discount” or a deduction from the cost of tuition and other fees charged by a non-DepEd SHS—which include private high schools, colleges and universities, local universities and colleges, state universities and colleges and technical and vocational schools.