A school personnel assists a student and his parents locate his classroom at the SPED Integrated School in General Santos City during the opening of school year 2022 to 2023 on Monday, 22 August 2022. MindaNews photo by ROMMEL REBOLLIDO
GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 22 August) – With the lower enrollment recorded in Soccsksargen for school year 2022 to 2023, Department of Education (DepEd) officials announced during Monday’s opening of classes that public schools in the area will still continue to accept enrollees.
Carlito Rocafort, DepEd Soccsksargen director, said private and public schools in the region listed total enrollees of 882,174, down by around 26% from last year’s 1,190,017.
Of the enrollees this year, 798,876 are in government-run pre-schools to senior high schools and 83,298 enrolled in private schools, he added.
Rocafort attributed the low enrollment turnout to the reluctance of many parents to send their children to school due to the ongoing onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said they hope to see the figures go up by 300,000 to hit their target of 1.2 million enrollees.
Rocafort said many parents enrolled their kids on the first day of school, something which he attributed to finances and overcoming their fear of the continuing threat of COVID-19.
A guard does an extra job in ensuring safety at the SPED Integrated School in General Santos City during the opening of school year 2022 to 2023 on Monday, 22 August 2022. MindaNews photo by ROMMEL REBOLLIDO
Romelito Flores, General Santos City schools division superintendent, said they listed 134,536 enrollees as of August 15, short of the 151,047 enrolled students last year.
Flores said they are still hopeful the enrollment figure will surpass that of 2021.
The DepEd Gensan head said 23 public elementary schools and eight secondary schools will hold full face-to-face classes beginning August 22.
The city has 68 elementary and 26 secondary and senior high schools spread in 26 barangays.
He explained that these schools are in far-flung villages “where there are few enrollees and the necessary social distancing can be observed.”
Flores disclosed they are in close coordination with the City Health Office (CHO) in trying to get students vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine, considering that only about two percent of children in this city under the five to 11-year-old age group have so far been vaccinated.
CHO records showed that only 2,040 children in such age group received COVID-19 vaccine shots.
Flores said there are at least 89,676 enrollees that still need to be vaccinated.
He said they are working with the CHO on a plan to have a school-based vaccination drive to address the problem of the low number of vaccinated schoolchildren.
About 50 school heads already agreed to the plan, but Flores raised concern in getting the consent of parents.
The low vaccination turnout among children can be traced to parents who fear possible side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine to their children, he said.
In Koronadal City, Crispin Soliven, Jr., city schools division superintendent, said “there is overwhelming enrolment in many schools,” some even surpassing their enrollment figures last year.
Soliven said Koronadal schools have listed 52,308 enrollees this year, almost repeating last year’s figure of 53,597 enrollees from pre-school to senior high school in both public and private institutions.
The DepEd Koronadal head said while they see the need to hire additional teachers in some schools, they cannot yet ascertain the exact numbers as they still do not have the final number of enrollees. (Rommel Rebollido / MindaNews)
