EDITORIAL - ‘Ghost’ students

Educational institutions are supposed to inculcate proper values, good moral conduct and responsible citizenship in their students. In this aspect of learning as well as in the main elements of formal education, most private schools are seen to do a better job than the typical public school where tuition is free.

This is due to limited funding and resources allotted to public schools, despite the constitutional mandate requiring that the education sector should get the largest share of the annual national budget.

This constitutional provision was violated in the 2025 General Appropriations Act, in which Congress drastically altered the national expenditure program submitted by the executive, cutting billions in funding for education and public health, and instead bloating funds for their pork barrel and giving the largest share of the GAA pie to the Department of Public Works and Highways. Several petitions challenging this institutionalized thievery are pending with the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the public is dismayed by a scandal that has rocked private schools.

The government, acknowledging that many private schools offer better quality of education, launched in 2015 a voucher program to allow deserving students in public schools, who are typically from low-income families, to be transferred to private institutions for senior high school.

Under the Senior High School Voucher Program, the Department of Education reimbursed the participating private schools for the tuition and other fees of the student beneficiaries.

Sadly, instead of giving poor but deserving students access to quality education in senior high school, the SHS Voucher Program has become mired in scandal, with scores of participating schools alleged to have made fraudulent reimbursement claims from DepEd.

Last Friday, DepEd announced that it had sought the help of the National Bureau of Investigation for an independent probe into the SHS Voucher Program. This came on the heels of DepEd findings that around 22,000 SHS students supposedly covered by the program for school year 2023-2024 were non-existent. The DepEd withheld some P200 million in subsidies for these “ghost” students.

Twelve private schools are under investigation for the current school year for “ghost” students as well as multiple reimbursements for the same student. From 2021 to 2024, a total of 55 schools have been recommended for removal from the program because of anomalies.

DepEd officials have reassured Congress and the public that measures are being implemented to promote transparency and tighten monitoring of a program with worthy objectives but which, like many projects in this country, has again been derailed by wrongdoing. The program must be rescued from vile people and reworked to serve its purpose.