More teachers, facilities, books needed amid increasing student population —Briones

Education Secretary Leonor Briones on Monday admitted that schools are having a hard time catching up with the ever growing student population, noting that almost one million students are being added each year.

“Every year, more than a million na bata raw ang dumadagdag sa enrolment. Kaya palaki nang palaki ang pangangailangan,” Briones said in Bam Alegre’s report on Balitanghali.

“We need more facilities, we need more books, we need more teachers because we have massive increases in enrollment every year,” she added.

Briones said some students from private schools are transferring to public schools for economic reasons.

Education Undersecretary Annalyn Sevilla said schools in Las Piñas, Caloocan, Parañaque and Quezon City have two shifts to accommodate students amid the shortage of classrooms.

"Usually kapag we are talking about metro cities like NCR (National Capital Region), Cebu and Davao, nandito po talaga yung over-population na tinatawag natin,” Sevilla said in an interview on Balitanghali.

To address the need for more classrooms, the Department of Education is eyeing to build more vertical structures in schools to make the most out of the available space.

"Limited yung space ng properties na puwede nating pagtayuan ng mga buildings and classrooms. Nagiging challenge natin sa DepEd,” Sevilla said

According to Sevilla, the current average ratio of a classroom to students is one is to 40.

"We have 707,000 classrooms existing. If we divide that by the 27 million students sa public school, eh maliit na talaga ho yung ratio. Kaya lang, ibang klase ho talaga ang Metro Manila. We are doing some adjustments," she said.

This school year, DepEd welcomed almost 27.2 million students nationwide.  —Joviland Rita/KBK, GMA News