THE NUMBER of enrollees for School Year 2021-2022 has reached 27.5 million, the Department of Education said on Friday.

DepEd’s Learner Information System Quick Counts logged 27,583,701 enrollees. Of this number, 21,077,125 were enrolled in public schools and 1,891,861 enlisted in private learning institutions.

So far, 57,388 enlisted in state and local universities while 202,603 students registered under the Alternative Learning System program.

This year’s number of enrollees is higher than last year’s 26.2 million.

The region with the most enrollees is Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon) with 3,596,340, followed by Central Luzon at 2,745,454 and National Capital Region, 2,537,053.

The Cordillera Administrative Region had the lowest number of enrollees at 470,107.

The department extended the enrollment until September 30.

DepEd Undersecretary Nepomuceno Malaluan said that DepEd will end the release of the enrollment quick count on September 20.

“We will release the official enrollment by end October after the learners’ profiles in our Learner Information System have been updated by the schools,” Malaluan said.

“We will then be able to provide information on migration of learners (from public to private or vice versa), and ‘balik-aral’ or those that skipped last school year and returned this school year,” he added.