The Department of Education (DepEd) condemned the article that Vice President and DepEd Secretary Sara Duterte "blamed the rallies" for the almost two million drop in target enrollment for the school year 2023-2024.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page on Saturday, DepEd pertained to the article with the headline “Sara Blames Rallies for 2 Million Drop in Enrollment” and was written by writer Diana Lyhd Suelto for Philippine Star (PhilStar) and One News Ph.

“DepEd condemns the title of the article for being highly-sensationalized, inaccurate and misleading. A perusal of the Vice President and Secretary of Education’s entire speech, delivered at the Peace Village on 11 September 2023, would show that at no point did she allude to rallies as being the reason for the alleged drop in enrollment,” it said.

According to the education department, Duterte did not utter such a thought— either verbatim or by insinuation — to "even remotely support the title’s conclusion."

Emphasizing that "distortion of facts for click-bait purposes should not be tolerated", DepEd demanded PhilStar and One News Ph to make necessary modifications to the article.

The education department said that the encoding of the number of students enrolled on the Learner Information System (LIS) is still ongoing, thus the drop is not yet available at this time.

"DepEd will consistently provide the public with regular updates on enrollment figures as they continue to increase, and announce the total number of enrollees for SY 2023-2024 once the encoding period closes on 30 October 2023," it furthered.

The DepEd Secretary stressed that the ACT Teachers lawmaker should not be asking her that question as she “did not kidnap” those kids.

"She’s looking for those two million students from me as if I kidnapped all of them and I don’t want them to study," Duterte said.

“Take note, I am not the one who has a kidnapping case. I am not the one who has a human trafficking case,” she added.