July 17, 2020 – The Department of Education (DepEd) would like to report that as of Friday, July 17 (8AM), there are already 21,344,915 enrollees in basic education for the combined public and private schools for School Year 2020-2021 at the end of enrollment period. This represents 76% of last year’s enrollment. For the public schools, the enrollment is 20,147,020, representing 88% of SY 2019-2020 enrollment.
We anticipate the figures to still increase in the coming weeks due to a lag in reporting of enrollment data, especially from private schools. Their enrollment period does not necessarily coincide with the enrollment period of DepEd. Reports for homeschooling are not yet in while learners in the Alternative Learning System have been affected by the loss of jobs occasioned by the downturn in the economy.
We are optimistic that we can meet our adjusted target of 80% of last year’s enrollment (27.7M) submitted to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).
The enrollment numbers for School Year 2020-2021 are encouraging because, despite the challenges posed by the economic impact of COVID-19, a clear majority of our parents have decided that the education of their children must continue.
However, we will still allow late enrollees. As stated in Sec V.D of Department Order No. 003, s.2018, “A school may accept late enrollees provided that the learner will be able to meet eighty percent (80%) of the prescribed number of school days for each school year and the quarterly requirement to pass the grade level as governed by the latest existing applicable DepEd issuances.”
We express our appreciation to the general public, especially the parents of our learners, which continues to believe that DepEd can deliver learning opportunities through various learning delivery modalities in a safe manner.
We thank the President for his consistent support for education, including “scraping the bottom of the barrel” for our funding needs. We also thank our teachers and staff, local government units, members of the Education Forum, NGOs, CSOs and the private sector for their valuable contributions in our continuous preparation for the opening of classes.