Regional curricular structures and grade-level access in Philippine basic education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55040/hdfrj107Keywords:
basic education, school network, educational quality, regional access, curricular offerings.Abstract
The territorial organization of schools affects how learners gain access to different grade levels in basic education. This study described regional curricular-offering structures in the Philippine basic education school network and examined their relationship with regional enrollment burden. Public DepEd Data Bits records on schools, enrollment, and historical school counts from school year 2017-2018 to 2021-2022 were analyzed. Regional comparisons covered 17 domestic regions and used compositional percentages, integrated-school share, senior-high-school-serving share, learners per school, and correlation analysis with sensitivity checks. In school year 2021-2022, purely elementary schools accounted for 43,090 of 60,429 schools, or 71.3% of the national total. Region VIII and BARMM showed the strongest dependence on purely elementary schools, while the National Capital Region had the highest integrated-school share and the highest learners-per-school burden. Integrated-school share was strongly associated with learners per school. The findings indicate that curricular-offering classifications are useful indicators for planning grade-level access, educational continuity, and regionally differentiated institutional capacity.
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