The Department of Education (DepEd) dubbed today’s school opening as historic even as critics continue to doubt government preparations for the program.

“There are 11,000 public and private schools that are ready to welcome warmly our first batch of senior high school learners,” Education Secretary Armin Luistro told The STAR yesterday.

“We celebrate this historic moment in Philippine education and enjoin every citizen to work hand-in-hand with DepEd in ensuring the success of these new programs,” he added.

DepEd assistant secretary Jesus Mateo also expressed readiness for the opening of classes, highlighting preparations made by their central and regional offices and the school divisions to ensure smooth resumption of classes today.

The agency’s help desk for concerns involving the school opening is on full operations to answer inquiries from school officials, teachers and parents.

A dedicated call center was also established for matters concerning senior high school.

Despite continued pronouncements of the government that schools nationwide are ready to implement senior high school, various sectors have warned the people of possible problems, including the perennial classroom congestion, lack of school materials and possible increase in the dropout rate of students.

“The low enrolment in senior high school only shows how great a burden K to 12 is for students and their families,” incoming Kabataan party-list Rep. Sarah Elago said.

“Imagine a minimum wage earner suddenly facing the problem of enrolling his or her child to a private school because of the way K to 12 was set up,” she added.

Elago was referring to enrolment data from DepEd, which showed that only around 550,000 have been encoded to the learner information system as of Thursday night.

Several classrooms allotted for Grade 11 will also not be available with construction still ongoing.

Mateo, however, stressed that contingency measures are in place and construction is technically not delayed in these cases as the buildings are both for Grade 11 and 12, which will be rolled out in June 2017.

DepEd earlier admitted that learner materials may not be delivered in time for the resumption of classes, with the agency stating that digital copies are available to teachers.

Some equipment for technical-vocational tracks are still in the procurement process, for instance in Eastern Visayas that released an invitation to bid for materials for subject specializations amounting to over P117 million only on June 8.

DepEd ready

But despite the perceived problems, Luistro remained unfazed and maintained that the agency is ready for the program.

He said the department estimates the actual enrolment of Grade 11 to be at more than one million in both public and private schools, attributing the low figures to delayed reporting of some of schools.

“I am not worried about the enrolment more than the technical challenges we are facing in our first-ever online enrolment system,” he said.

“On or before June 17, we would be able to present a more solid report on the enrolment statistics for the first cohort of senior high school students,” added the DepEd chief.

Based on data released by the agency, around 1.5 million students completed Grade 10 (former 4th year high school) last March, with the bulk – around 1.2 million – coming from public schools.

More than 1.3 million of the Grade 10 completers took part in the early registration for senior high school, with over 877,000 indicating that they would enroll in one of the almost 6,000 public senior high schools across the country.

Over 437,000 students said they want to pursue senior high school in private schools, including some 200,000 public Grade 10 completers.

DepEd allocated over P12 billion to provide subsidies, through a voucher program, to students who would enroll in non-DepEd schools for senior high school.