"This school year, we projected almost 18 million students in public elementary and high schools," Education Secretary Florencio Abad said.
Abad placed the number of elementary students at "almost 13 million," while the public high schools will have to accommodate five million students.
He said the DepEd had projected that at least 17.6 million students — an increase of 290,898 students for both the elementary and high school levels — will be attending public schools.
Abad said this figure indicates a student population increase of 0.5 percent in elementary schools and 4.4 percent in high schools or an average increase of 1.68 percent in the student population for both levels.
He also projected that the country’s public high school student population "will continue to grow annually."
He said the DepEd had 465,000 public school teachers last year and that the department is expecting an additional 10,000 new teachers, for a total of 475,000 teachers for this school year.
This puts the student-teacher ratio at 45 students per teacher "and that is not congested," Abad said. "The problem is the distribution of teachers, not the lack of teachers."
In public high schools, enrollment has been growing by 4.7 percent annually, as opposed to the slower enrollment growth of 5.6 percent posted by public elementary schools.
Because of this, the DepEd is having serious congestion problems in public schools due to the distribution of teachers, Abad said.
Meanwhile, the DepEd will release P1.5 billion in scholarship funds so 345,649 deserving public high school students may enroll in private schools to help solve the problem of classroom congestion. The number of private high school students transferring to public schools has increased because of the high cost of tuition in non-government schools.
Through the Education Service Contacting (ESC) program, students who cannot be accommodated in public schools for lack of classrooms, teachers and facilities are given a chance to enroll in private schools, with the government subsidizing their tuition and school fees at the rate of P4,000 per student.
Abad said that due to the high inflation rate in the country, parents who usually send their children to private schools are now forced to transfer their children to public schools because they can no longer afford the high tuition.
He said the DepEd’s ESC program aims to reduce the number of students congested inside public school classrooms, as well as help out private schools that have suffered a drastic drop in enrollees.
However, Abad said the textbooks used in private schools must be provided by these schools and will not be sold to transferees.
Abad said the ESC program is one of the projects provided for under Republic Act 6728 — or the Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education (GASTPE) law.
In another development, the militant organization Anak ng Bayan Youth Party challenged the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Arroyo administration to freeze looming tuition hikes and miscellaneous fee increases for the coming school year.
"If CHED is really sincere in its pronouncement to regulate tuition and other fees, it should start by barring schools from increasing tuition this June," Anak ng Bayan spokesman Carl Marc Ramota said in a statement. "It’s high time that CHED starts to flex its muscles on incessant increases in tuition and other fees."
According to CHED, of the 1,342 private higher education institutions in the National Capital Region, there are 205 — 15.38 percent of the total number of HEIs in the NCR — which sought an increase in tuition ranging between 15.27 percent to 15.28 percent.
Ramota also challenged the CHED to implement the amendments to CHED Memorandum No. 13 or the guidelines for consultation on proposed tuition hikes, which was supposedly implemented last school year.
The revised guidelines cover consultation on tuition and miscellaneous fees, to which school owners object.
School owners said only tuition increases must be consulted on with the students, not the miscellaneous fees.
Schools are forgoing tuition increases but they have been jacking up miscellaneous fees, a move seen as questionable by student groups.
The miscellaneous fees that have come under fire include the energy fee of the University of Santo Tomas (UST), the air-conditioning fee of the University of the East (UE) and the development fee, Ramota said.
He also asked the CHED to lead the campaign to scrap the tuition deregulation policy, which is embodied in Section 42 of the Education Act of 1982.
Ramota chided CHED over its proposal to impose a tuition cap using the country’s inflation rate as a mechanism for regulating tuition hikes.
"Instead of regulating incessant tuition hikes, it would only institutionalize yearly increases in tuition," Ramota said. "It would only mean automatic tuition increase."
Meanwhile, the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) said that a tuition hike cap is not enough to help the students and their parents.
NUSP president Rizza Ramirez said in a statement that the cap on tuition increases will not address the rising cost of education.