Panel pushes DepEd, DOST to expand science scholarships from gov’t

The Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2) on Saturday called for the expansion of the quota for science high school scholars as the government supports merely 1 percent of the country’s more than 27 million students.

Citing latest data from the Department of Education (DepEd), Edcom lamented that only a total of 279,796 learners in elementary and high school were admitted to science high schools under the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and DepEd for school year 2023 to 2024.

“DepEd should take a look at [these science programs] and expand that with [other government agencies] … [I hope we can] increase this support to 5 percent of students in the country,” Pasig Rep. Roman Romulo, who also serves as Edcom co-chair, said at a roundtable discussion with concerned stakeholders on Friday.

Not enough support

The country’s “best and the brightest” are supported through the Philippine Science Science High School (PSHS) system under the DOST, while the regional and provincial science high schools and the special science programs offered in public elementary and secondary schools are under the DepEd.

Most of the DOST and DepEd scholars were in special science programs at the grade school level (106,670 students) and in the special program on science, technology and engineering at the secondary level (143,118), the same DepEd data showed.

The rest were in regional science high schools (9,428 students), legislated science high schools (10,230) and PSHS (10,350).

The congressional body noted that the figures pale in comparison with other countries where their coverage hit around 3 percent, like in China and South Korea, and all the way to 10 percent of their learners in Australia and Europe.

According to Ronnalee Orteza, executive director of PSHS, the school had to reject qualified students in the regions due to “limited slots.”

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Orteza, who was quoted by Edcom as saying that some students in Calabarzon, for example, had to be turned down due to a “cutoff” of 120 in the region.

A call for admissions for Grade 7 students for school year 2024 to 2025 posted on PSHS’s website shows that only 1,920 out of the top 15,000 exam qualifiers were eligible to enroll in their chosen Pisay campus.

This means only nearly 13 percent of qualified applicants can be accommodated and taken in as scholars.