VICE President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte has asked private schools to help the Department of Education address the crisis facing the country’s basic education sector.

Duterte said the challenges facing the basic education sector were exacerbated by the three years of pandemic, which forced the department to resort to blended learning.

The pandemic, she added, also showed that the demand for quality education far exceeds the capacity of public schools.

“The public schools cannot address the education crisis alone. Private schools have a pivotal role in addressing the challenges we face today. Our private school’s expertise, innovation, and commitment to providing quality education to their students have helped shape Filipino society,” Duterte said in her speech during the launch of the Public-Private Education Complementarity Framework at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City.

She said one of the areas that private schools can also help is in addressing congestion in public schools.

“By working together, we can decongest public schools and expand access to quality education for students from low-income families,” Duterte said.

She added that in the last two years, over four million students have benefitted from Educational Service Contracting and the Senior High School Voucher Program.

The ESC and the Senior High School Voucher Programs are the two major subsidy programs of the DepEd for public school students who want to transfer to private schools due to overcrowding in the former.

Last year, the senior high school voucher program benefitted 1,132,115 while 1,031,193 students got the same from the ESC program.