ALMOST half a million students in Ilocos Region are attending face-to-face classes, the Department of Education said.

Of the 497,266 participants, 299,539 are in Kindergarten to Grade 6, 137,070 are in junior high school and 60,657 are in senior high school, Pedro Jose Cudal, DepEd Ilocos Regional Office Policy, Planning, and Research Division planning officer, said.

Cudal said 1,839 schools out of the total 3,409 schools in the region resumed physical classes.

He added that health protocols were strictly followed in schools holding physical classes.

The DepEd earlier announced that 25,786 public and private schools joined the progressive expansion phase of face-to-face classes.

Of this number, 25,122 were public schools and 664 were private schools.