Various theories were raised during a House hearing on Wednesday, March 19, on how "ghost students" came into existence in the Department of Education (DepEd)'s senior high school (SHS) voucher program.

As the House Committee on Basic Education and Culture continued its investigation, lawmakers found a holes in the program--particularly certain rules that were  risk of being secretly violated for the sake of maintaining benefits.

Under DepEd's rule, private schools "will lose their subsidy" if a student-beneficiary drops out in the middle of the school year or does not enroll in the following year.

Schools will also be disqualified if a student-beneficiary "fails to be promoted to the next grade level" or is transferred to a DepEd school, a State University and College (SUC) or a Local University and College (LUC).

For committee chairman and Pasig City lone district Rep. Roman Romulo, DepEd's rules were "risky."

"'Yung enumeration ninyo, meron na doon risky. 'Yung sinabi nyo kung di pumasa... so all private high school will pass all students​ (There are actually risks in those that you enumerated, particularly about your policy that students need to pass the school year so that schools can claim the voucher)," Romulo said.

"Kasi kung di nila pinasa, 'di sila makakuha ng payment​ (If they fail the student, they won't  be able to claim the voucher). So maybe you should also review that [in] particular. Kasi (Becasue), it's to their own benefit to just pass everybody," he added.

Romulo also believed that some schools might just take the chance of not declaring if students under the program have already been transferred to a different school so they could still get a subsidy.

These were floated as solons tried to unearth reasons why there listings of "ghost students" in the senior high school (SHS) voucher program particularly from 2016 until recently.

According to DepEd, it terminated its contract with at least 55 schools after finding out that some of its supposed student-beneficiaries were actually "ghost students" or students who no longer existed on their records.

Around P200 million worth of government funds were prevented from being disbursed after the agency flagged the said schools.