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And switching his portfolio hats to education - a journalist also asked Fonseca if the high school dropout rate has reduced under the Education Upliftment Project.
That project eliminates tuition and fees for students at select schools and provides support for daily healthy meals, uniforms, transportation, learning device needs and improvement to school infrastructure and resources.
Presently it focuses on government-owned secondary schools. The Minister said the effect is not immediately noticeable - he called it incremental:
Reporter:
"How much has the dropout rate decreased? If it has decreased any at all since the free education project took flight?"
Francis Fonseca,Minister of Foreign Affairs
"It has decreased. It has decreased. but again, these things are, you know, it takes a lot of time. So, it's incremental. It's incremental. So, yes, in the EUP schools, as we call them, the education upliftment project schools, we've seen enrollment go up, I think with the exception of one school, in the south where enrollment has really remained stagnant, I think ANRI has remained stagnant. Every other school we have seen a marginal increase in enrollment. but it's a continuous struggle. It's a daily struggle because we don't want just these kids to enroll in school. We want them to stay there. And over the past few decades, what we've had is the issue of young people coming to school. Sometimes they go to school for three days, then they don't show up again for the last two days. We want that to change."
And he wasn't kidding when he called it marginal. MOE stats show that in the school year 2022 - 2023, the enrollment rate increased by 0.8%.
