ALMOST 23 million students reported to school on the first day of classes on Tuesday, August 29, the Department of Education said.

Data from the DepEd Learners Information System showed that there were a total of 22,917,725 students enrolled in 44, 931 public and 12,162 private schools nationwide.

Calabarzon had the highest number of students — 3,488,180. It was followed by Central Luzon with 2,626,684 and the National Capital Region, 2,497,178.

The Cordillera Administrative Region has the lowest number of enrollees with 355,728.

The department expects the number of students to further increase because of late enrollees.

“The final count will only be established once all reports are in. That will take around two weeks. The ongoing late enrolment contributes to a longer time of having the final number,” DepEd Assistant Secretary Francis Cesar Bringas said.

Many students were confronted with the same problem in previous years such as classroom shortage.

Bringas earlier said classroom shortage in public schools hit 159,000, up from the previous year’s 91,000.

Bringas said most of the schools in NCR that he visited had the ideal classroom to student ratio, though some of them had to implement double shifting of classes.

“Generally, we had a 1 is to 43 or 1 is to 44 class size ratio, and that is within the ideal ratio for classes,” he said.