‘Senior high students to congest public schools’

MANILA, Philippines — Transferring displaced senior high school (SHS) students from state colleges and universities (SUCs) to public schools would congest classrooms nationwide amid the Department of Education (DepEd)’s “outstanding classroom backlog of about 165,000,” groups of teachers and students warned yesterday.

In a joint statement, Teacher’s Dignity Coalition (TDC) and Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (SPARK) suggested that the DepEd consider the geographic distribution of students who could be displaced by the looming discontinuation of SHS in SUCs and local universities and colleges (LUCs).

“We assert that with the DepEd’s outstanding classroom backlog of about 165,000, accommodating displaced SHS students will be the main concern. It will mean that classes in public schools will be congested, which will lead to overburdening our teachers,” the groups said.

“The DepEd should consider the geographic spread of the displaced students so as to prevent enrolling them in schools miles away from their residences, which will bear additional costs to their families,” they added.

The DepEd’s data show that about 160 SUCs and LUCs offered SHS programs before the Commission on Higher Education’s directive for all SUCs and LUCs to stop offering SHS programs starting school year (SY) 2024-2025.

SUCs and LUCs offered SHS programs as part of an agreement with the DepEd for the transition period for K-12 from 2016 to 2021, when most colleges and universities would have little to no freshmen.

The admission of SHS students was ordered to stop due to the lapse of transition period and the expiration of legal mandate of SUCs and LUCs to offer SHS programs.

TDC and SPARK also scored the DepEd’s “default response” to the long-standing congestion problem by encouraging students to transfer to private schools and avail themselves of vouchers to subsidize their schooling.

They added that the DepEd needs to look into diploma mills and fly-by-night schools that “charge exorbitant school fees, which include pricey field trips, uniforms and superfluous expenses that fail to contribute to the holistic development of our learners.”

“While this is true, given the ample increase in the