Catholic schools were not among those the government recently flagged for claiming funds for non-existent voucher beneficiaries, or those called “ghost students,” according to the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP).
Fr. Karel San Juan, SJ, CEAP president, clarified this at a press conference on Tuesday, September 30, where he was asked whether Catholic schools were involved in the anomalies in the Department of Education (DepEd)’s multi-million senior high school voucher program.
“They do not come from the Catholic schools,” San Juan said.
The “ghost students” were uncovered by the Private Education Assistance Committee (PEAC), a government mechanism that certifies the schools receiving funds in the voucher program and monitors their compliance with rules, San Juan said.
PEAC verifies that schools part of the voucher program actually exist and have proper systems to handle government subsidies.
“When they do their very systematic certification and monitoring work, that’s where they discovered the ghost students. And in the past, we have released statements on that,” the CEAP president said.
Earlier this month, DepEd Secretary Sonny Angara said that they have filed criminal cases against private schools that were caught defrauding the voucher system, which pays schools directly for the subsidized tuition of qualified Grade 11 and 12 students.
Angara told the House appropriations committee that DepEd had filed cases against seven unnamed private schools accused of claiming subsidies for ghost beneficiaries. The total amount involved is P61.9 million, Angara said.
In July, DepEd said it could recover over P100 million in fraudulent claims, in addition to the P65 million already ordered refunded by 54 schools that were removed from the program for listing students who were either ineligible or fictitious.
‘Bad name’ for private schools
CEAP treasurer Br. Edmundo Fernandez said the discovery of these “ghost students” is hurting the private school sector.
“There are many schools that have ghost students. These schools exploit these subsidies and it’s a serious concern for CEAP,” said Fernandez, who is also president of De La Salle-College of St. Benilde.
“In fact, it gives a bad name to Catholic and private schools,” Fernandez said.
CEAP, which represents around 1,500 Catholic schools, said it is cooperating with DepEd on the issue by strengthening its own monitoring.
“We have a self-monitoring mechanism to monitor that we are complying with the standards of government to be given government funding,” the CEAP president said. “Pero may mga nakakatakas pa rin (But there are still some that escape monitoring). The good thing is we can monitor and flag them.”
The voucher system currently covers students at the junior and senior high school levels, with subsidy amounts ranging from P9,000 to P13,000 per student.
CEAP is pushing for its expansion to include elementary school students amid its declining enrollment and rising operational costs, which it said are worsened by competition with tuition-free government-run schools.