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DepEd turns to map data to ease public school overcrowding
By Creselda Canda-Lopez
“While mapping of public schools was previously conducted by DepEd and OpenStreetMap, this is the first time DepEd will do comprehensive mapping of all private schools across the country, critical next step in furthering its recently released policy, DepEd Order No. 6, series of 2024, on public and private basic education complementarity framework,” EDCOM 2 Executive Director Karol Mark Yee said Department of Education (DepEd) will undertake nationwide mapping of all 12,212 private schools this July to identify those that can “absorb” students from nearby overcrowded public schools through targeted voucher subsidies.
In partnership with Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) and select universities, DepEd aims to pin down and eventually analyze precise coordinates of all private schools in the country to decongest public schools that have too many students or too few classrooms.
Findings of this analysis will be used to inform government’s strategic distribution of student vouchers under Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education (GASTPE), according to EDCOM 2, three-year congressional body tasked with reviewing country’s education system.
Nationwide mapping project builds on DepEd’s and private sector’s previous efforts to build comprehensive dataset of all private schools in the country, EDCOM 2 stressed.
This initiative comes at time when Congress is deliberating on bills that aim to expand DepEd’s GASTPE program to cover all levels of basic education, or from kindergarten to Grade 12.
Challenges have hounded DepEd’s GASTPE program, especially its tuition fee subsidy scheme for private senior high school students under Senior High School Voucher Program (SHS-VP).
In March, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, chairman of Senate basic education panel flagged inequitable distribution of voucher subsidies, ended up benefiting some student who do not need them.
DepEd data cited by Gatchalian shows that in school year 2021-2022, at least 53% or P7.21 billion of P13.69 billion allocation for SHS-VP went to non-poor students, or students whose families earned above poverty threshold.
Gatchalian also said absence of effective “targeting mechanism” for SHS-VP deprived an estimated 542,000 aisle learners of much-needed subsidies. Aisle learners refer to students who already count outside regular class size in school.
Government has also lost at least P360 million from “ghost” or undocumented students who were tagged GASTPE benefiacries, Gatchalian learned during Senate hearing on scholarship program.
Gatchalian, co-chairperson of EDCOM 2, said new mapping initiative aims to make sure that government resources are “spent optimally with goal of decongesting public schools and helping poorest learners.”
Latitude and longitude coordinates of private schools will be used for geospatial analysis, aims to “enable identification of nearby public and private schools that could still accommodate additional enrollment,” EDCOM 2 told media.
“For congested public schools, this list of nearby schools can be used to facilitate enrollment referrals…at national level, aggregating this information will also help determine extent of ‘surplus’ enrollment congestion that can be decongested through transfers, facilitated with use of vouchers or other strategies,” EDCOM 2 added.
With nationwide mapping project, EDCOM 2 also eyes faster collection and validation of data of private schools in National Capital Region, Region IV-A, and BARMM; regions with worst overcrowding in public elementary and junior high schools.
Findings from analysis will involve technical assistance of EDCOM 2 can also be used for policy development as well as budget programming, congressional body said.
Lawmakers and education officials have increasingly tapped voucher system to accommodate growing student population in basic education amid perennial shortage of classrooms in public schools.
In 2023, DepEd built only around 3,600 new classrooms out of planned 6,300, based on figures shared by Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio during her second Basic Education Report in January.
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