17K Grade 11 students facing displacement

because of the additional two years, while for the public universities, they have excess classrooms and teachers because there would be no freshmen coming in,” De Vera said.

Temporary solution

As a solution, the CHEd and DepEd signed an agreement for a transition period during which public universities would be allowed to accept SHS students with DepEd providing them with subsidies through a student voucher system since secondary education should be free.

Due to the pandemic, the matter was not addressed after the transition period ended in 2021 with schools transitioning to online learning.

“Now, the DepEd issued a circular that students in public universities will no longer be given vouchers because the transition period is over. That is why our order to the public universities is to [convene] their boards of regents to talk about this, and if possible, to no longer accept new senior high students or Grade 11,” De Vera said.

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“[As for] the Grade 12 [students] that are enrolled with them, they should just let them finish [the academic year] because there is no more legal basis [for offering high school education] and there will be no more subsidies from the national government for these students,” he added.

In public universities not under the CHEd, De Vera said that as autonomous institutions, their board of regents should come up with their own policy of stopping the admission of SHS students while deciding what to do with current enrollees. All problems arising from the DepEd circular should be communicated by the concerned schools’ boards of regents to CHEd regional offices which would raise them before the commission en banc for proper action, he said. INQ