City of San Fernando, Pampanga—Incoming Grade 11 students in public Senior High Schools are given until June 30 to enroll in their chosen school as the Department of Education Regional Office III announced the extension of the SHS enrollment in Region 3.

This move seeks to ensure that the projected enrollment for public SHS students will be realized. As of the first enrollment deadline last June 3, only 57,637 out of the 100,333 or 57.6% of projected Grade 11 enrollees have registered.

OIC-Regional Director Malcolm S. Garma, during the DepEd Region III Mid-Year Media Conference, said that there is a need to guarantee that all targeted Grade 11 students will be enrolled in their preferred school since this is the first year of the implementation of the SHS program. Consequently, OIC-RD Garma encouraged the students and their parents to enroll now and not wait until the deadline to give school heads of public senior high schools ample time to prepare and adjust their respective SHS Program Offerings.

In line with this objective, all public secondary school heads are tasked to drum up support from local government officials in coordination with PTA organizations in disseminating this information and in tracking the enrollment of the Junior High School completers of SY 2015-2016.

Furthermore, DepEd RO3 continues its efforts in preparation for the SHS implementation with the hiring of 3,888 SHS teachers who are now undergoing trainings and orientations, procurement of equipment for the Tech-Voc-Livelihood track worth P418M, and the close monitoring of classroom construction implemented by the Department of Public Works and Highways or DPWH. As of June 6, 54% or 1,659 out of the 3,103 needed classrooms for Senior High School in public schools in Central Luzon has already been completed before the June 13 opening of classes. OIC-RD Garma said that DPWH engineers committed to complete SHS classroom construction in the entire region until August.•