DepEd targets 15,000 new classrooms by 2027 via PPP

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education will turn to private sector partnerships to build 15,000 new classrooms by 2027 — its latest attempt to address a persistent shortage that has forced scores of students to study in overcrowded spaces.

Education Secretary Sonny Angara presented the P37.5-to-P60 billion infrastructure plan to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. during the first Cabinet meeting of the year on Tuesday, January 7. 

The Philippines is facing a backlog of about 165,000 classrooms due to limited government funding, lengthy procurement processes, and a growing student population that has strained public school infrastructure for decades.  

Angara has said he plans to pursue more public-private partnerships to address this and other shortages in the basic education system. 

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An estimated 600,000 students nationwide will benefit from the construction of new classrooms through the PPP School Infrastructure Project, DepEd said in a press release on Wednesday, January 8.  The project is also expected to generate at least 18,000 jobs.

“The classroom gap is a massive challenge, but we believe that leveraging private investments through PPPs is the most efficient and sustainable way to address this,” Angara said.

DepEd eventually plans to build 30,000 and 60,000 new classrooms in the next two phases of the project. 

The department also plans to tap public-private partnerships to digitalize public schools by mid-2026.

This includes powering schools without electricity, providing Low Earth Orbit satellite internet connectivity in schools without internet, and distributing tablets and laptops.

"Connectivity at this scale is expected to dramatically boost the effectiveness of teachers, while offering Filipino children a wealth of learning resources previously out of their reach," the department said. 

Vladimer Quetua, chairperson of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, earlier expressed opposition to the department's plans of constructing new classrooms through public-private partnerships.

Quetua in a statement in December said the government "should not pass the responsibility of ensuring quality education" to the private sector. His group called for the allocation of at least 6% of the country's gross domestic product to the budget for education. 

This is not the first time that DepEd has gone the PPP route in attempting to scale up its facilities to accommodate its growing student population. 

A 2022 study by state think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) found that DepEd's first PPP project in 2011 delivered over 14,000 classrooms across Regions I, III and IV-A by December 2015 under its first phase.

The second phase, completed between 2019 and 2021, built about 4,000 more classrooms in CAR, Regions I, II, III, X, and Caraga.

However, the PIDS study noted that the projects faced several challenges, including procurement delays, site accessibility issues, permit problems, and issues with contractors abandoning their assignments.

These experiences led DepEd and the PPP Center to recommend improvements in future PPP projects, such as allowing more time for site inspections, better coordination with local governments, and clearer contract provisions for maintenance works.