Angara: Marcos wants 'immediate' issues in education fixed 

MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. asked the Department of Education to solve immediate problems facing the country's schools first, to convince the public that the government can deliver on its "grand vision" to fix the education crisis in the next years.

Education Secretary Sonny Angara said the president's orders came in the wake of the recent midterm polls, which saw dismal results for many of Marcos' endorsed candidates, and which were widely interpreted as a sign of public dissatisfaction with this presidency. 

Speaking at a forum on Wednesday, July 30, two days after the president delivered his fourth State of the Nation Address, Angara said: "The main message [from the president] after the midterm polls is to solve the immediate problems."

"The public will believe we can achieve our grand visions if we resolve day-to-day problems, like delivering things on time," Angara said in mixed English and Filipino.

Marcos' SONA on Monday promised these fixes to the education system: equipping all public schools with internet access by the end of this year, freeing teachers from administrative duties by hiring complete support staff before the end of 2026, and building 40,000 classrooms before the end of his term in 2028. 

Internet access push  

Angara said the government has already started distributing SIM cards with data to all 46,000 public schools nationwide. 

The SIM cards contain a monthly data allocation of 25gigabytes and are being sent to far-flung areas in partnership with the Department of Information and Communications Technology. 

Marcos vowed in his address to connect all public schools to the internet by the end of the year, saying around 12,000 still lack access.

Angara said the connectivity drive is meant to solve, among other things, the Philippines' poor performance in international assessments, which are strictly administered through computers.

"One reason we lag behind in international assessment exams is that students don't even know how to hold a computer mouse properly," Angara said. "So they can't answer questions within an hour."

He added that all students who took the PISA earlier this year were provided with computers beforehand.

"We are now living in the age of AI. We need new gadgets. We need good data. Otherwise, we wont realize the benefits of technology," Angara said.

Teachers to be freed from non-teaching duties

The government plans to hire administrative officers for all 46,000 public schools by the end of next year, a move that aims to allow teachers to focus solely on their teaching duties. 

"Teachers won't have to measure students' weight anymore for feeding programs, won't have to repair broken computers," Angara said. "When there's a broken vehicle, they won't be the ones delivering because we'll have dedicated staff for that."

'Classroom shortage requires private sector help'

The Philippines has struggled with a shortage of classrooms, building only around 6,000 each year over the past decade, even as the student population continues to grow.

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

Angara called this a "heavy problem" that affects learning quality and students' ability to study effectively.

Marcos, in his SON,A said the administration aims to deliver 40,000 new classrooms before the end of his term in 2028 through public-private partnerships.

"We need to think out of the box, and I see this happening through private-public partnerships," the DepEd chief said.

The DepEd secretary said this could deliver over 100,000 classrooms within five years or by 2030. 

This is not the first time that DepEd has gone the PPP route in its attempt to clear its classroom backlog.  

A 2022 study by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) found that DepEd’s first PPP project, launched in 2011, delivered more than 14,000 classrooms across Regions I, III, and IV-A by the end of 2015.

A second phase, completed between 2019 and 2021, added around 4,000 classrooms in CAR, Regions I, II, III, X, and Caraga.

But the PIDS study also found recurring problems — including delays in procurement, hard-to-access sites, permit issues, and contractors abandoning projects.

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.