166K classroom gap dogs Marcos’ SoNA: Whatever happened to 40,000 pledge?
School officials said the buildings were declared unsafe within four years because of alleged substandard construction.
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Daily TribuneSchool officials said the buildings were declared unsafe within four years because of alleged substandard construction.
Days before President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivers his fifth State of the Nation Address (SoNA), lawmakers warned that the country still lacks more than 166,000 classrooms despite record education funding and the administration’s pledge to eliminate the shortage before the end of the President’s term.
At Thursday’s Senate Committee on Basic Education hearing, chaired by Senator Bam Aquino, education officials acknowledged that the classroom deficit remains one of the biggest challenges facing the education sector.
Aquino said Congress allocated P67.9 billion in the 2026 national budget for classroom construction — enough to build more than 20,000 classrooms — but he pointed out that implementation, not funding, was the government’s biggest obstacle.
“Every day of delay means more students studying in overcrowded classrooms while teachers continue handling multiple shifts,” Aquino said.
He cited Kasiglahan Village Elementary School and Kasiglahan Village National High School in Rodriguez, Rizal, where 18 of 103 classrooms have been condemned despite having been completed only in 2015.
School officials said the buildings were declared unsafe within four years because of alleged substandard construction, forcing thousands of students to continue attending classes in overcrowded facilities.
Where’s warranty?
Aquino said the contractor’s structural warranty should be enforced if defects are confirmed.
The hearing came nearly a year after Marcos described the classroom shortage as “pitiful” in his 2025 SoNA and pledged to build 40,000 classrooms through partnerships with the private sector before the end of his term in 2028.
“I’d like to remind everyone that we’re only a few days away from the SoNA. Even in last year’s SoNA and in succeeding meetings with governors and mayors, education has always been presented as a priority of the government,” Aquino said.
The classroom shortage underscores the broader problems confronting Philippine education.
In the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa), Filipino 15-year-olds ranked among the world’s lowest performers in mathematics, reading and science.
Likewise, the World Bank has estimated that about 90 percent of Filipino children suffer from “learning poverty,” meaning they cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10.
Slow pace
Department of Education officials told the Aquino panel that classroom projects have been identified for all provinces, 87 percent of cities, and 75 percent of municipalities to be implemented by the Department of Public Works and Highways, local government units, and other programs.
The DepEd said P49.8 billion of the P67.9-billion allocation has been assigned to the projects, while requests covering the remaining P18.1 billion are being finalized.
The department attributed earlier delays to the validation of school sites and land ownership documents, a process that it said has been completed.
Aquino, however, questioned the pace of implementation, noting that many local government units still do not know if they will receive classroom projects despite the budget having been enacted in December 2025.
He asked the DepEd to publish the master list of beneficiary LGUs, saying that greater transparency would help local officials plan their education spending and avoid duplicating projects.
Education experts said the learning crisis was exacerbated by prolonged school closures during the pandemic and uneven access to quality instruction.
Edcom warning
The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II), in its final report this year, warned the country faces a “proficiency collapse” driven by chronic weaknesses in basic education.
Aside from a shortage of about 166,000 classrooms, the commission found that more than half of public schools have no permanent principal, many teachers teach subjects outside their specialization, and overcrowded schools continue to operate on multiple shifts.
It said sustained improvements in infrastructure, teacher quality, school leadership and governance are needed to reverse declining learning outcomes.
