EDUCATION Secretary Sonny Angara yesterday said the department is working with the private sector to build 15,000 new classrooms by 2027 to ease congestion in public schools.
Earlier, Angara said the classroom shortage in public schools stood at 165,000 and may take several decades to resolve if the current pace of construction is not addressed.
He said one way of addressing the perennial problem is to tap the private sector, through the Public-Private Partnership.
The PPP was started by the administration of then-President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III for its various infrastructure projects, including school buildings.
“To ease classroom congestion, DepEd is working with the private sector to build more than 15,000 new classrooms by 2027,” Angara said.
He said the DepEd is also working on an enhanced design of school buildings, considering that the country faces numerous typhoons every year, resulting in damage to school infrastructure.
“New school buildings are also being designed to withstand natural disasters, including multi-story structures with open ground floors to prevent damage from flooding,” he added.
In a related development, Angara said that 884,790 teaching positions have been filled as of June 15, “ensuring that public schools are fully staffed as in-person learning resumes.”
The Department of Budget and Management also reported that it recently approved the allocation for the 20,000 teaching positions that DepEd requested for 2025.
The items, which include Teacher I, Special Needs Education Teacher (SNET), and Special Science Teacher I, will be distributed across all regions.
Angara said that based on updated school directories, enrollment data, and validated teacher gaps, the highest allocations are going to Region IV-A (Calabarzon) with 2,655 items, followed by Region III (Central Luzon) with 2,152, and Region VII (Central Visayas) with 1,774.
The 20,000 new positions, according to Angara, come at a time when DepEd is actively accelerating teacher deployment.
He said that in just eight months, the department has decreased unfilled teaching posts from 72,964 in August 2024 to 38,862 by April 2025.
“The national filling rate now stands at 96.03 percent, a substantial increase from 94.78 percent in 2022,” he added.
