THE MOST disturbing number in education is not necessarily the number of children who fail an examination. It is the number of children who are no longer there to take it.
Western Visayas is confronting precisely this problem. Department of Education (DepEd) Region 6 data show a troubling three-year decline in gross enrollment rates across elementary, junior high school and senior high school. Worse, the problem does not end at the school gate: transition, retention, promotion, completion, cohort survival and graduation rates have also fallen, while repetition and school-leaver rates have increased.
Consider junior high school. Its gross enrollment rate dropped from 103.89 percent in School Year 2022-2023 to 92.18 percent in SY 2024-2025. Elementary enrollment likewise declined from 95.57 percent to 90.91 percent, while senior high school fell from 113.45 percent to 100.19 percent over the same period.
Somewhere behind every learner who disappears from the statistics may be a family unable to afford daily transportation, a teenager pressured to work, a child living too far from school, or a household struggling simply to put food on the table.
Indeed, DepEd-6 has already identified socioeconomic pressures, household poverty and transportation difficulties among the barriers preventing learners from entering and progressing through the education system.
But identifying broad causes is only the beginning. DepEd, local governments and social welfare agencies need to drill deeper into the numbers. Who exactly is leaving school? At what grade level? In which barangays and municipalities? At what point in the school year? And, most importantly, why?
Government needs a dropout map of Western Visayas – not merely regional percentages, but granular information that can guide intervention down to communities and, where appropriate, individual learners.
This is especially urgent because the education system serves many children already facing difficult circumstances. DepEd-6 records 96,496 learners belonging to Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program households, 34,279 from geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas, 49,985 Indigenous Peoples learners, 32,947 Special Needs Education learners and 247,509 learners affected by disasters. These figures should tell policymakers where to look first.
If transportation is driving children out of classrooms in a particular municipality, provide transportation assistance. If hunger is keeping them away, strengthen feeding and social protection. If poverty is forcing teenagers to work, identify those households for targeted intervention. If distance is the problem, examine whether learning facilities, Alternative Learning System programs or other appropriate arrangements can bring education closer to them.
Different causes require different solutions. Blanket programs designed in regional or provincial offices will accomplish little if government does not understand why Juan in one barangay and Maria in another stopped attending school.
Western Visayas already has a massive education infrastructure – 3,444 schools serving 1,079,924 learners, supported by 46,927 teachers. Another 22,478 learners are served by the Alternative Learning System through 1,205 Community Learning Centers.
Yet the strength of an education system cannot be measured simply by how many schools it operates or how many children appear on enrollment lists. Its real measure is how many children it refuses to lose.
DepEd-6 Regional Director Cristito Eco was correct when he declared that “no learner should ever be left behind.” But that noble principle must now be translated into something measurable and actionable.
Find the missing learners. Identify the communities losing them. Determine why they left. Then bring them back – or prevent the next child from following them out the classroom door.
