Lack of slots makes entry into ‘Pisay’ tougher
Gaining admission into Philippine Science High School (PSHS), fondly called “Pisay” by current and former students, has become more “competitive” over the previous years, with thousands of potential scholars “turned away” due to the limited slots available in all its 16 campuses, according to the body tasked to oversee the country’s education system.
Each regional campus of the PSHS system can accept only between 90 and 120 students, except for the main campus in Quezon City, which can take in 240 students.
Because of the limited slots, qualified applicants have “no opportunity” to enter the PSHS system at all, according to the Year Two report of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2).
The Edcom has recommended that the capacity of slots for one of the country’s top science high schools should be expanded to “increase the number of gifted students supported from only one percent to three percent.”
According to the commission, the entire PSHS system had 49,481 applicants for its 16 campuses nationwide for School Year (SY) 2022-2023 and SY 2024-2025, but only 11,351 or 23 percent were deemed as “qualified.”
But of the 11,351, the commission noted that only around 49 percent or 5,544 were able to eventually study at PSHS while the remaining 5,807 were “turned away,” mainly because of the lack of slots.
Same problem
All of the science school’s campuses had the same problem: the number of qualified applicants was more than the slots available.
Based on Edcom’s data, it showed that at the main campus in Metro Manila, there were 4,540 applicants—the highest among PSHS campuses nationwide—for school years 2022-2023 and 2024-2025, with only 3,234 eventually considered as “principal qualifiers.” However, the main campus only had 719 slots.
The PSHS in Ilocos region saw 3,943 applicants, of which 533 qualified for the available 347 slots, the commission added.
For the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which has no PSHS campus, it entertained 679 applicants, although the Edcom did not mention where the qualified scholars ended up.
