DepEd says schools won't lose business in K to 12

CEBU, Philippines - Education Secretary Armin Luistro allayed fears of private colleges and universities of losing business with no freshmen enrolling in 2016. The first year of a two-year senior high school (SHS) will be put in place that year under the department’s Kindergarten to 12 Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) program, since the schools would be allowed to offer Grades 11 and 12.

Luistro said that private higher education institutions (HEIs) could also establish SHS and accommodate the incoming Grade 11 students in 2016, and Grade 12 in 2017.

Luistro said that DepEd would conduct an assessment of HEIs that would like to establish SHS in their respective schools.

Lawyer Tonisito Umali, DepEd assistant secretary for legal and legislative liaison and chairperson of the DepEd’s technical working group on transition management, said that HEIs would have to file permits with DepEd to offer SHS.

“They can apply for a permit to set up ‘stand-alone’ senior high schools that will be regulated by DepEd,” Umali said.

Umali said that DepEd is also looking at other options to address the business concerns of private HEIs such as tapping them to accommodate the SHS students that could not be accommodated by the current 5,000 private high schools.

“We may engage their services, enter into an agreement for a publicly funded, privately provided arrangement for them to accommodate the SHS students,” Umali said.

“Right now, we only have around 5,000 high schools and not all these schools can accommodate all the SHS students,” Umali explained.

The DepEd subsidy, he said, might either be full or partial.

“We recognize the issue about these HEIs not having clients or students in 2016. And definitely, we have enough time to enter into arrangements with these HEIs that will be affected by the SHS implementation in 2016-2018,” Umali said.—(FREEMAN)