DepEd tracks down senior high students

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Education (DepEd) will track down graduating junior high school (Grade 10) students who have yet to register for the senior high school program.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro said DepEd divisions are already tracking those who are not on the list of students, or those who took part in the early registration held last year.

“Some were just due to technical problems during the time of encoding, while others were unable to do so as the schools or program specializations they preferred were note yet on the official DepEd listing of senior high schools with provisional permits,” Luistro told The STAR yesterday.

Around 1.3 million Grade 10 students enlisted during the early registration for senior high school last November, with 1.1 million of them from public schools, DepEd said.

Luistro said those from public schools constitute 90 percent of the total population of Grade 10 students nationwide.

He debunked claims of a militant youth group that around one million students may drop out because of the implementation of the K to 12 program.

“The K to 12 program strips off the right of every youth to a free public basic education,” League of Filipino Students chairperson Charisse Bañez said.

“We are getting reports from several grade 10 students that they have no idea where to go after the school ends in March. Some already gave up and accepted that they will not be able to finish high school. This is sad and revolting,” she added.

Bañez said around 1 million students did not take part in the registration.

“We should not allow this to carry on. The K to 12 makes it more difficult for Filipino families to produce high school graduates. It seems that Aquino and Luistro have no knowledge that most of the Filipino parents, specifically the workers and peasants, consider the graduation of their children in high school as the only inheritance they can leave behind,” she said.

But the figures, based on official DepEd data, show that only over 100,000 public schools students did not take part in the early registration.

Enrolment in Grade 10, based on a separate dataset released by DepEd, showed that there are 1.2 million public Grade 10 students for the current school year, contrary to the figures released by the LFS, which said there are 2 million enrolees.

Luistro earlier said he had already ordered the DepEd divisions to track down students who are not on the list.

Starting June, the government will start implementing the additional two years in basic education.

Some P12 billion were allotted to cover the tuition of public junior high school students who wish to enrol in private senior high school.