A DAY before the official start of the school year 2023-2024, on Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023, the Department of Education (DepEd) 7 has logged around 1.8 million students enrolled in Central Visayas.
In an interview with SunStar Cebu on Monday, Aug. 28, DepEd 7 Director Salustiano Jimenez said they are expecting a total of 2.2 million students to enroll for the school year.
Jimenez, who remains optimistic about achieving their target enrollment, acknowledged that there are delays in the encoding of enrollment data in their LIS.
The director, however, said the number might increase from 1.8 million once all the enrollment data, particularly, from island schools, are reflected in the Learner Information System (LIS).
“Those who are already in the LIS are the ones being counted; that’s why we still have around 1.8 million (enrollees) this time,” Jimenez said.
SunStar Cebu reported last Aug. 25, that at least 1.4 million were enrolled in public schools, while around 186,000 were enrolled in private schools.
DepEd 7 is expecting 200,000 to 300,000 students to enroll in private schools this academic year.
Jimenez emphasized that schools are instructed to admit students, including late enrollees, until October.
He acknowledged that there are various reasons why parents and guardians could not enroll their children as early as they would like to enroll in school.
He said schools do not have a daily quota in enrollment. In fact, he said, they noted certain days when the increase in daily enrollment went up to a hundred thousand regionwide.
Jimenez, however, emphasized the importance of early enrollment as it is a determing factor for the school’s preparations.
“Enrollment is the vital factor that we consider because we cannot determine the needs of a school if we do not have the actual enrollment data,” Jimenez said.
He said the official enrollment data would be the basis to determine the needs of a particular school, such as classroom requirement, and the number of required teachers and chairs.
DepEd also conducted the “Oplan Balik Eskwela,” which addresses the concerns and issues raised by the parents and guardians.
He added that they also conducted orientations for teachers, parents, and learners to ensure that the opening of classes will go smoothly.
Meanwhile, Jocelyn Mission, a teacher at Tungkil Elementary School, shared with SunStar Cebu on Monday the continuing problem with the lack of classrooms in their school.
She said they have approximately 900 students enrolled for this academic year. However, they have to accommodate these students with just 17 classrooms and a teaching staff of 25.
She said they scheduled classes into two shifts: one for the morning and one for the afternoon.
She emphasized that each teacher would be responsible for overseeing a class of 45 to 55 students at every grade level.