House urged to probe Marcos, Duterte's failure to meet classroom targets every year
MANILA, Philippines — Are classrooms being sidelined in favor of more “corruption-prone” projects? That’s the question three lawmakers want answered as they urge the House of Representatives to investigate the sluggish pace in building new classrooms under the Duterte and Marcos administrations.
In House Resolution 425 filed Tuesday, November 4, Rep. Antonio Tinio (ACT Teachers), Rep. Renee Co (Kabataan Partylist), and Rep. Sarah Elago (Gabriela Partylist) urged the House basic education committee to conduct an inquiry into the “extremely low performance” of the Department of Education's school building program.
The resolution cites years of missed targets and underspending despite severe classroom shortages nationwide, which currently stand at over 140,000.
Citing data from the Commission on Audit from 2018 to 2024, the resolution said both the Marcos and Duterte administrations had repeatedly fallen short of their classroom construction targets.
Under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte’s leadership of DepEd in 2023, only 192 out of 6,379 planned classrooms were completed — a mere 3%.
The shortfall, however, was not new. In 2018, during the Duterte administration under then-Education Secretary Leonor Briones, just 11 classrooms were built out of 47,000 targeted; in 2020, 187 out of 5,174; and in 2021, 191 out of 1,035.
The only year that more than half of the target was met was in 2019, when 3,213 classrooms were built out of 4,110 planned.
No new classrooms were reported built in 2022, while 605 were finished in 2024.
As of 2025, only 22 new classrooms have been built. This is not even 1% of the target (6,000).
DepEd under Secretary Sonny Angara — who took over in mid-2024 — has blamed the Department of Public Works and Highway (DPWH) for the persistent bottlenecks in constructing new facilities.
Since 2018, the DPWH has held exclusive control over classroom construction — a rule that Angara says has bogged down projects in red tape, and sidelined local governments and private partners that could have delivered classrooms more quickly and at lower cost.
In his 2025 State of the Nation Address, Marcos pledged to construct 40,000 classrooms before the end of his term in 2028 — only 27% of the estimated backlog, the resolution noted.
For 2026, the administration proposed a P28-billion budget for the Basic Education Facilities program, including P13.2 billion for 4,869 new classrooms. The resolution said this allocation covers just 3% of the deficit.
After several years of missed targets, the lawmakers said it is time for Congress to investigate the “very low performance, low budgets and low targets” of the DepEd’s school building program. It said the trend reflects “not only the lack of intent” by the Marcos administration to solve the classroom crisis, but also a preference for “pork barrel” projects.
"Instead of allotting sufficient budget for the needs of the Filipino people, the national budget was funneled to corruption-prone programs and projects, such as flood control projects, farm-to-market roads, multi-purpose buildings, the Barangay Development Fund, Unprogrammed Appropriations, confidential fund and intelligence fund, that will yield more kickbacks for corrupt government officials," the resolution read.
The lawmakers said in the resolution that "focusing [on] flood control projects rather than the much-needed classrooms has a dire implication to the education sector amid the learning crisis."
In August, Senate basic education panel chairperson Bam Aquino similarly warned that the country’s classroom backlog could persist well beyond the terms of five presidents unless the government overhauls how it builds schools.
Data presented in the Senate last August showed that classroom projects often take up to three years to complete and cost up to P3.8 million each when built by the DPWH. By contrast, schools constructed by local governments and private partners cost nearly half as much and are finished faster.
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