Angara: Only 2% of public schools
across the country remain closed
Education Secretary Juan Edgardo Angara reported a smooth opening of School Year 2024-2025 as 98 percent of public schools welcomed over 20 million Filipino students back on Monday, July 29, 2024.
Angara visited Carmona National High School and Elementary School despite the early morning rains due to a low pressure area to inspect the opening of classes.
“It’s a big deal. We really practiced ‘bayanihan’ so the students can go to school today,” Angara said in an interview.
The Department of Education (DepEd) said it recorded 20.5 million learners as of noon yesterday.
Of the total, 11,301,108 learners are from the elementary Level; 6,204,006 are Junior High; 2,870,891 learners are Senior High School; and 222,067 learners are under the Alternative Learning System.
Calabarzon reported the highest number of enrollees at 3,070,457 followed by Central Luzon with 2,216,637 learners and National Capital Region with 2,207,473.
Nationwide, 861,234 public school teachers and 45,565 school heads welcomed millions of learners, according to DepEd data.
DepEd said 842 schools were unable to open classes after being affected by Super Typhoon “Carina” and the enhanced southwest monsoon, which affected 803,824 learners.
“It’s quite small because it’s just almost 2 percent of the whole country,” Angara said.
As this developed, Angara said DepEd is set to work with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to hasten the construction of more classroom buildings.
He admitted that one of the challenges in the current procurement system of the agency is the validation process.
“We can’t construct because other schools sites are not being validated, like if it has a land title, problem with the land being uncapable of a multi-story building in it, what they call the soil test,” Angara said.
“We need to change the current system and I am eyeing the so-called early procurement activities. It is being done in the Department of Public Works. I hope we can also do it through coordination between DepEd and DPWH,” he added.
Angara earlier reported the country still needs to build 159,000 classrooms, which increases by 12,000 per year.
Editor’s Note: This is an updated article. Originally posted with the headline DepEd: SY 2024-2025 opens smoothly with more than 20 million back-to-school Filipino students
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