Department of Education Secretary Leonor Briones reported Monday that 85.07 percent of target learners have enrolled for the incoming school year which opens on October 5.

In a virtual press briefing, Briones said 23,643,113 learners have enrolled in private and public schools nationwide out of the targeted 27,770,263 learners who enrolled in the previous academic year.

“We’ve achieved 96 percent of our previous enrollment in the public sector and now our private schools enrollment is picking up may be because our economy starts to pick up especially in NCR and Region 4-A and we see learners who choose private schools for their education are slowly coming back at 41 percent,” she said in a mix of Filipino and English.

According to data from the DepEd, as of Monday, 21,813,184 have enrolled in public schools and 1,785,323 in private schools.

Region 4-A (Calabarzon) logged the highest number of enrollees with 3,221,518 while the Cordillera region recorded the lowest with 377,587.

“And also, the migration of learners from private schools to public schools, seems to be calming (down) already, because our economy is opening already,” Briones said.

As of Wednesday last week, the number of private school students who transferred to public schools stood at 398,009.

Of the total number of transferees, some 243,631 are elementary students, 105,845 are junior high school students, 41,937 are senior high school students, and 6,596 are learners with disabilities.

The enrollees were from kindergarten to senior high school, as well as learners with disabilities and those taking the alternative system. (PNA)