THURsDAY I sEPTEMBER 5, 2o1g i

'The number showed that The PSA s Annual PovertY

DepEd: High
By DELON PORCALLA
and SHEILA CRISOSTOMO the reason for thp high num- Indicators Survey showed
ber of dropout rdte of girls is that school droPouts have
reached more than 297 mtl-
dropout rate ,
The spike in the number
of out-of-school youths can
be traced to teenagers who
marriase and family matters,
which"can be tr'eated also
as teenage pregnancY," said
lion, 6L.9 percent of whom
are girls aled 'l'6 to 24 who
due to teenage . are forced into mariiage
due
to underage PregnancY, the
Educatioh Secretary Leonor
Briones, citing datifrom the
are iorcgdlnto 1'marriage or
familv matters."
I

pregnancy Department of 'Education

(DdpEd) said yesterdaY.
Philippine Stitistics Author-
ity (PSA)
Briones disclosed this at a

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economic opportunities as
DepEd FromPasel adolescent pregnancy forces
a maiority of teenage parents
hearing before the House- aPF learners starting at the age to ab'andbn their educatiory"
orooriations committee where of L0, considering that the Arasonds said.
ln"' a"funded the agency's earliest recorded Pregnancy ,fccording to the PoPula-
P518.8s-billion budget for in the Philippines is L0 years tion Commission (PopCom),
2A20. old," she said. 24 babies are born to teen-
By comparison, Briones said Laguna 3rd District ReP. age mothers every hour
the iurvey statistics are much SolAiagones said the govern- and almost 20O,000 FiliPino
higher than the 18.8 percent ment can prevent cases of teen teens get pregnant annuallY,
dr6r:out rate of studerits who Dresnancv if Filipinos can act most of them from ages L5
do iot have interest at all and
'
i"d talk'resporisibly about to 19. Popcom added that
the 1"8.6 percent who are finan- sex educatior; stnessing how Filipino t6ens who were ex-
ciallv challeneed. underased and unmarried oosed to vice or the internet
vouth co-ntinue to have limited 'ut early age usually end
rhis is wfiere the imple-
mentation of the Reproduc-
'access
to sex education and up"ttwith unplanned preg-
tive Health Law in the public reproductive health services. nancies.
school curriculum should be "Teenage pregnancy Per- To address this, the PoP-
given attention, she said. petuates the cycle of pov- Com bared that it was now
- "Evenbefore I assumed of- erty and inequality, as it does orenarins a dr#t executive
fice, I was given instructions not only negatively impact brd'er to"hasten the imPle-
by President Duterte to adjust the lives of young parents mentation of programs thafi
tfie curriculum to include RH and their childrery but also will address uilderaged
and gender education for dlsenfranchises them from pregnancies in the countrY.
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