CHED official: Grade 10 completers should not give up dreams of quality education

A Commission on Higher Education (CHED) official on Tuesday encouraged Grade 10 completers to enroll in senior high school amid reports that around 200,000 to 400,000 students may not proceed to Grade 11 due to financial and other reasons.

"All Grade 10 completers and their parents should not give up on their dreams of attaining quality education," said CHED Deputy Executive Director Napoleon Imperial in a statement.

"In this historic period in our country's educational system, the government is providing all the support they need to become globally-competitive members of society. For now, it is in the form of support for the Department of Education's senior high school; two years from now, it will be through financial assistance for tertiary education," he added.

Imperial heads the secretariat of the Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (UniFAST) Board, which is mandated under Republic Act 10687 to prioritize poor but deserving students in state-funded college scholarships and loans.

Of the estimated 1.5 million Grade 10 finishers in the country, only a million students have enrolled in Grade 11, the first of the two-year senior high school offering under the K-12 curriculum.

DepEd, however, is expecting numbers to increase further since records show that as of June 17, over 1,600 schools have yet to submit and report their senior high school enrolment data.

The UniFAST Board believes Grade 10 completers, upon the advice of their parents, would much rather work than enroll in Grade 11 because they are not aware of UniFAST.

"They think that they only have one option: to quit school, start working, and support their families. That is no longer the case," said CHED Chairman Patricia Licuanan, head of the inter-agency UniFAST Board.

The board said the rollout of senior high school program provides them "enough time" to properly evaluate existing student financial assistance programs (StuFAPs) to determine their strengths and weaknesses.

"The insights from such evaluations and systemic consultations will become the bases for redesigned StuFAP modalities which will continue to be implemented by various government agencies," it said.

"In the meantime, all existing StuFAPs will continue, until such time that significantly better policies and programs are issued by the UniFAST Board." —Virgil Lopez/KG, GMA News