Opposition solons push for House probe on snail-paced classroom construction

Opposition lawmakers in the House of Representatives have sought a congressional inquiry on the snail-paced construction of classrooms in the past few years.

ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio of Act Teachers party-list, Kabataan Party-list Rep. Renee Louise Co, and Gabriela Party-list Rep. Sarah Jane Elago made the call in House Resolution 425.

“It is imperative for Congress to investigate the very low performance, low budgets and low targets in constructing the much-needed new classrooms. It shows not only the lack of intent of the Marcos administration to address the problems in the education sector, but also how it prioritizes funding and implementation of flood control projects,” they said.

The Makabayan lawmakers lamented that the severe shortage of classrooms resulted in grossly oversized classes, among other problems.

“Public school teachers are forced to manage classes up to 60 to 80 students, which is double the ideal size of 35, leading to both inhumane working conditions for educators and significantly diminished quality of education for Filipino students,” they said.

They also cited Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon’s revelation in a Senate hearing that only 22 out of the 6,000 classrooms targeted for completion this year were constructed.

On the other hand, 822 classrooms are still under construction while 882 are yet to be built.

The opposition lawmakers added that no less than Education Secretary Angara pointed out that only 22,092 classrooms were constructed from July 2022 to July 2025.

While this reduced the classroom backlog to 165,443, Angara said this was unacceptable and that the DPWH focused too much on flood control projects, instead of prioritizing the construction of new classrooms. 

In addition, the lawmakers said the National Expenditure Programs for fiscal years 2020 to 2026 showed repeated instances of unmet targets in the construction of classrooms, such as:

• 11 out of the 47,000 target in 2018
• 3,213 out of the 4,110 target in 2019
• 187 out of the 5,174 target in 2020
• 191 out of the 1,035 target in 2021
• 0 out of the 1,168 target in 2022
• 192 out of the 6,379 in 2023, and
• 605 out of the 1,628 in 2024.

In their resolution urging for an investigation in aid of legislation, the opposition lawmakers stressed that focusing on flood control projects rather than much-needed classrooms has dire implications on the education sector amid the learning crisis.

They cited data from the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM2), which revealed that the number of functional illiterate Filipinos almost doubled to 24.8 million in 2024 from 14.5 million in the 1990s. — JMA, GMA Integrated News