DepEd defends voucher program for senior high school

MANILA, Philippines - Education Secretary Leonor Briones has defended the government’s senior high school voucher program that subsidizes the tuition of students enrolled in private schools.

“It is unfair to tag the department’s budget as ‘private school-friendly’ when P400 billion of the proposed P546 billion budget next year is for the delivery of basic education through our public schools,” Briones said in a statement yesterday.

The secretary was reacting to criticisms of the Department of Education (DepEd) budget, which doubles the current subsidy for senior high school voucher to almost P24 billion for 2017.

“You must remember that this program was designed to give students and their families more options to decide which school is most relevant to their needs and career goals,” Briones said. “With 4,486 private schools offering senior high school, compared with 220 non-DepEd public schools, it is not surprising that there are more enrollees in private schools. Therefore, more budget is needed for the voucher program.”

Earlier, Kabataan party-list Rep. Sarah Elago questioned the voucher program, saying it would “invariably count as direct profits of private institutions.”

“The funding for the implementation of the K-12 program has been highly criticized in the past for its emphasis on subsidizing private schools,” Elago said. “The manner in which the budget for the senior high school voucher program is designed confirms these observations.”

She added: “In a way, we can consider this allotment for private senior high schools as ‘sure profits’ for them, again confirming fears that DepEd might have actually designed the full implementation of the K-12 Program in a manner that will guarantee greater profit for school owners. This is one of the reasons why we continue to call for the junking of the K-12 program.”

But Briones stressed that the program is important, as it gives students more options in choosing which track to pursue in the additional two years of basic education.

The voucher program is a financial aid for Grade 10 completers, who wish to pursue Grades 11 and 12 – or senior high school under the K-12 scheme – in private schools, local universities and colleges, state universities and colleges, and technical and vocational schools.