More than seven million students are not yet enrolled as the 2002-2003 school year will start in primary and secondary schools in less than a week.

"As of now we have 21 million learners enrolled.... because 28.6 (million) are expected learners for this year," Michael Poa, Department of Education (DepEd) spokesman, said during the ''Laging Handa'' public briefing on Tuesday.

However, Poa said the number of enrollees continue to increase as the DepEd encourages the parents to enroll their kids before the August 22 deadline.

"For now our enrollment has continued to increase... let's not wait for the August 22 deadline," he said.

"For now we have not talked about the extension. So the deadline of our enrollment is until August 22," he added.

Poa said more private school students want to transfer to public schools. This was among the concerns discussed by DepEd during last Monday's command coordination meeting attended by different agencies of the government.

"The major concern is really with enrollment... The most concern in the enrollment would be the transfer from private school to public school," he added.

Poa said based on their latest data more than 80 percent of their teaching and non-teaching staff have been vaccinated.

He also noted that the DepEd is also coordinating with the Department of Health for the possible rollout of mobile vaccination in schools.

"We will prioritize the conduct of regular counseling. We will encourage the teachers and learners to get vaccinated. Once we already have sufficient numbers of those who want to get vaccinated, we will talk with the DOH if we can roll out the mobile vaccination," he added. Robina Asido/DMS