Briones declares start of second school year amid COVID-19 pandemic

Department of Education Secretary Leonor Briones on Monday officially declared the start of School Year 2021-2022 with acknowledgement of “success” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Last year, I declared victory with the opening of classes on October 5, 2020,” Briones said in her message during the DepEd National School Opening Day Program

“Today, September 13, 2021, DepEd and the rest of the country celebrate with great joy in success in opening classes for the second year at the time of COVID-19,” she added.

Briones said the tentative graduation figures indicated that 98.13% of Grade 6 students finished the academic year; Grade 10 with 96.9%; and Grade 11  with 97.2% in the last school year.

“As expected, criticism poured in, and 'failures' were pointed out. These are part of the process in the journey to victory and success. A famous personality has commented that 'if you have no critics, you’ll likely have no success',” she added.

At least 93.8% of students last year have enrolled so far as classes for School Year 2021-2022.

Interviewed on GMA News’ Unang Balita, DepEd Undersecretary Nepomuceno Malaluan said they are anticipating that the enrolment will exceed the record in the previous school year.

“As of this morning, umabot na tayo ng [we already reached] 24.6 million that is 93.8% already of our enrollment level last school year,” he said.

He added that some regions have reported more than 100% of their students who enrolled for this school year.

According to Malaluan, this is an indication that more students from last school year have enrolled and those who skipped the previous academic year have returned.

Based on the latest DepEd data, a total of 24,603,822 have enrolled so far.

The regions with the most enrollees in Calabarzon with 3,226,044; followed by Central Luzon with 2,442,313; and National Capital Region with 2,238,668.

Meanwhile, the regions with the number of enrollees that exceeded their record last school year were Cagayan, Mimaropa, Northern Mindanao,Cordillera, Caraga, and Bangsamoro.

At least 18,561,298 have enrolled in public schools; 1,443,849; and 41,348 in  in state universities and colleges as well as in local universities and colleges.

At least 4,557,327 students have signed up during the early registration.

For the Alternative Learning System, the DepEd said 198,297 or 33.08% of last year’s students have enrolled so far.

Last school year when the classes started on October 5, the total number of enrollees was recorded at 24.7 million.

This was only 89% of the total enrollment during the School Year 2019-2020, according to the DepEd.

Also last school year, around 398,000 students from private schools transferred to public schools amid the pandemic, according to DepEd. —KBK, GMA News