The Department of Education (DepEd) on Thursday announced that the majority of parents prefer modular learning modality for their children over other options available for the upcoming school year.
Citing results from the Learner Enrollment and Survey Forms (LESF) gathered nationwide, DepEd said that 8.8 million parents preferred modular for their children both in public and private schools. Modular modality refers to both printed and digital or offline learning materials.
DepEd said 3.9 million parents chose blended modality or a combination of two or more alternative learning modalities. Only 3.8 million parents opted for online. A total of 1.4 million parents prefer educational television while at least 900,000 chose radio-based instruction. Around 500,000 or half a million parents preferred other modalities.
DepEd said the LESF was the main enrollment tool used for the remote and dropbox enrollment for School Year (SY) 2020-2021. “The tool is an expanded version of the regular enrollment form which captures not only the basic profile of learners but also relevant survey questions for parents designed to profile the household in terms of their readiness for distance education,” DepEd said.
The LESF captured the vital information that will provide DepEd with evidence in making the implementation of Learning Continuity Plan (LCP) grounded on data such as the employment status of parents or guardian, manner of going to school of students, and number of students in every household.
Other information include the presence of household members that can provide instructional support in distance learning, availability of gadgets and devices, access to Internet, preferred learning modality, challenges that may affect learning in distance mode, and the number of private school learners who enrolled in public schools.
“These data and information were used by every region, school division, and school in designing their respective learning continuity plan particularly in making decisions on what learning modalities will be implemented,” DepEd said. “These data were also used in determining the budget requirements for the LCP particularly on the requirements for learning resources,” it added.
For this school year, DepEd held a 45-day enrollment period from June 1 to July 15. The opening of the classes was also moved to Aug. 24 to prepare for the transition into blended and distance learning.
To accommodate more students in schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic, DepEd said that late enrollment will be allowed until September.
National enrollment data from DepEd as of July 30 said there are 22.36 million students enrolled in public and private schools nationwide. DepEd said that the current enrollment figure is already 80.04 percent of the total enrollment in SY 2019-2020.
Of the current total enrollment for SY 2020-2021, DepEd data showed that 20.95 million are students enrolled in public schools or 92.8 percent of last school year’s enrollment rate. There are 1.37 million students who registered in private schools or 31.9 percent of the total enrollment in SY 2019-2020.
The enrollment data covers Kindergarten-to-Grade 12, including Alternative Learning System (ALS) and non-graded learners with disabilities. Of the current number of enrollment, 1.54 million students are in Kindergarten; 10.97 million in Elementary; 7.02 million in Junior High School (JHS); and 2.44 million in Senior High School (SHS). A total of 58, 643 learners with disabilities also registered along with 313, 263 students under the ALS.
Region 4-A (Calabarzon) still has the highest number of enrollment with over three million followed by Region 3 (Central Luzon) with 2.35 million and National Capital Region (NCR) with 2.30 million students.
As of July 30, the LESF said that 372, 570 students from private schools have transferred to public schools. Of this number, 228,667 are in elementary, 99, 194 in JHS, 38, 664 in SHS, and 6,046 learners with disabilities.
DepEd expressed gratitude to all parents who participated in the survey and expressed support to its LCP. “Let us allow our learners to continue learning while we protect their health and well-being.”