The education sector is one of the casualties of the coronavirus pandemic with a number of private schools halting its operations for the coming school year. 

In a Viber message to Rappler on Monday, August 24, Education Undersecretary Revsee Escobedo said some 440 small private schools – those that have a student population of 100 and below – have suspended their operations for the school year 2020 to 2021 due to “lack of enrollees.”

Asked if these schools are permanently closing down, Escobedo said they cannot tell yet as they are still validating and consolidating reports from these schools. 

“Kulang pa reports on the reasons. Consolidating pa po,” Escobedo said. (We still lack reports on the reasons. We’re still consolidating.)

“Take note that many of the 440 private schools are offering elementary education,” Escobedo added.

Of the 440 schools, 332 were offering “purely” elementary education. Central Luzon had the highest number of private schools that would not be opening this school year with 88 schools, followed by Calabarzon with 67 schools, and the National Capital Region with 54.

As of Monday, private schools have registered a total of 1,785,323 students, which is just 40% of last year’s 4.4 million enrollees for private institutions.

DepEd said that some 390,000 private school students have transferred to public schools.

In a Rappler talk interview in July, Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (Cocopea) Managing Director Joseph Noel Estrada raised concerns over the “alarmingly low” turnout of enrollees for this year.

DepEd has allowed private schools to open classes before October 5, provided they would use the distance learning approach. (READ: DepEd: Private schools can start classes before October 5 using distance learning)

Based on the DepEd data, a total of 1,672 private schools have started classes before August 24, while 3,264 schools resumed their classes today. This was based on the 5,601 private schools that submitted their reports to the agency.

There are a total of 14,435 private schools in the country.

– Rappler.com