DepEd observes smooth school opening in Iloilo City
The first day of the school year 2007-2008 for some 63,000 thousand students here in this city was generally smooth and orderly, according to Dr. Erlinda Gencaya, Iloilo City School Division Superintendent.
However, she also noted some minor incidents like the overflowing of late enrollees in some schools in the city.
"Our enrollment ended last Friday but there were parents who enrolled their children only yesterday for whatever valid reasons they may have, but we are still accepting enrollees," clarified Gencaya.
Gencaya said they are expecting about 42,000 pupils in public elementary schools and 21,000 students in public high schools this school year.
There are 52 public elementary schools and 13 secondary schools in this city.
Gencaya said there is no classroom shortage in the elementary schools here in this city except in some secondary schools where there are big enrollments. The ratio of students to classroom is at the average of 35-40 students for every room both in the elementary and secondary.
The Department of Education (DepEd) said the usual classroom, textbook and teacher shortages that accompany every school opening in the country is expected to be a thing of the past as the government included these perennial problems among its priority concerns this year.
It is expected that the classroom to pupil per student shortage will be zero based on classroom-student ratio of 1:50 with double shift for elementary except for isolated cases where local conditions prevent double shifts.
A total of 105.7 million textbooks were also procured by the government to be distributed to all public schools for priority subjects like English, Mathematics and Science. This is expected to benefit 7 million students and will help attain a 1:1 textbook to pupil ratio for said subjects.
(PIA)