A CHILDREN’S  agency of the United Nations on Monday called on the Department of Education to strengthen the country’s alternative education as more out- of-school youth and adults failed to enroll this year due to Covid19 pandemic.

“I think we need to continue strengthening the alternative learning system, and we need to try to attract the children to go to the formal and non-formal education depending on the situation and the context that they face,” UNICEF Philippines Chief of Education Isy Faingold said during the weekly virtual press briefing ‘Handang Isip, Handa Bukas.’

Faingold noted how it is important to organize good communication campaigns to reach the communities and to increase the enrollment of the country’s out-of-school youth and adults.

“I think this is an area that DepEd is already doing, and UNICEF is already supporting this. UNICEF would like to engage here to organize a more community-based campaign. I think that’s important to understand especially in this crisis when there is an interruption in the education system,” Faingold added.

For her part, Education Secretary Leonor Briones emphasized the concern about the growing number of out-of-school youth, but noted the number of enrollees have been increasing every day.

“The reduction of enrollment of learners is largely in the private sector, but this has been already responded to, especially with the opening of the economy. For example, and I will repeat the numbers during the first week of June was only 7,388 students from private schools enrolled. As of today, 14 September, 2.08 million are now enrolled in the private schools and this coincides also with the opening of the economy,” Briones explained.

“For private schools enrollees, there are expenses involved. Also the return of hundreds of thousands of overseas workers who usually send their children to private schools has added also to the challenge that we are facing,” the DepEd chief added.

Briones thanked the support of the non-government organizations for the continuity of education.

“But again, with all the efforts UNICEF has been helping out on the communication and information efforts that have been extended seem to have had an impact. We still have to work even harder because right now we’re just below 50 percent of last year’s enrollment of private school learners, although the numbers are increasing every day,” she said.

“And also the migration of private school learners to public schools has also slowed down or completely stopped. But before, every day you would have private school learners moving over to the public schools, and of course, we do not refuse them,” Briones added

And somebody recommended for those who are not able to enroll in private schools, they can always go to public schools which is now pivoting towards quality.”