1 million more students enrolled this year – DepEd

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education said a million more learners have enrolled for the current school year compared to 2020 at the height of the pandemic.

Enrollment data from the department showed 27,232,095 students enrolled for school year 2021-2022 that began last Oct. 5. This figure is 3.83 percent higher from the estimated 26.23 million students enrolled in school year 2020-2021, according to DepEd’s Learner Information System (LIS).

The DepEd welcomed the higher official enrollment turnout, expecting it to move close to 28 million learners when the final count is tallied.

“This confirms our earlier statement that that our learners last year continued their participation in formal school this year, and that a considerable number of those who skipped last school year have returned to school,” DepEd said in a statement.

Public school enrollment increased by 5.23 percent as it now caters to 23.9 million students.

Badly hit by the pandemic, the private education sector meanwhile saw its enrollment go down by 4.83 percent, now only with 3.2 million learners enrolled.

Enrollment in state and local universities and colleges also went down by 12.80 percent to 103,551 learners while those in Philippine Schools Overseas decreased by over a fifth to only 15,775 students.

Despite the lower enrollment figures in the private sector,
DepEd noted that there was actually a net migration of students from public to private schools.

Data showed 612,140 learners transferred from public to private schools, compared to 305,513 learners shifting from private to public schools.

This is equal to a net transfer of 306,627 students from public to private schools.

Still, DepEd said that this data is not yet final as there are still 529 out of the total 60,774 schools in the country that have yet to update their enrollment profile in the LIS.

The department will allow these schools to update their LIS profiles up to the end of this month.

“We have notified the Division Superintendents where the non-participating schools are located to find out the reasons why these schools have not updated their enrollment profile, and to provide assistance in completing the LIS updating if necessary,” it said.