Angara Rallies Nation to End Classroom Shortage: ‘No Child Left Behind’

Wazzup Pilipinas!?

MAKATI CITY, 14 August 2025 — In a decisive move to accelerate the fight against the country’s decades-old classroom backlog, Education Secretary Sonny Angara has sounded a clarion call for a united front — mobilizing national agencies, local government units (LGUs), private enterprises, and civic organizations — to ensure every Filipino child has a place to learn, no matter how remote or disaster-prone their community may be.

The effort stems from President Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr.’s directive to close the classroom gap with urgency. For Angara, the mission is clear: build faster, build smarter, and open the doors for more hands to help.

“Kung gusto nating walang batang maiiwan, kailangan kumilos tayong lahat — mula national hanggang lokal, mula gobyerno hanggang pribadong sektor,” Angara stressed. “Sama-sama nating dapat tiyakin na may silid-aralan ang bawat bata, kahit nasa bundok, isla, o baybayin na binabaha.”

Breaking the Bottleneck

Under the current set-up, the Department of Education (DepEd) identifies the classroom needs, designs the structures, and sets the safety standards, while the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) handles the funds, procurement, and construction. While effective in many cases, this process can slow to a crawl when the DPWH is pulled into disaster response or other urgent infrastructure priorities.

In the proposed 2026 National Expenditure Program (NEP), DepEd has secured a Special Provision on flexibility, allowing the department to tap LGUs, private sector partners, and non-government organizations as additional “implementing actors” in the School Building Program. The aim is to ensure that funds and skilled builders meet in the right place, at the right time — even in the country’s most challenging terrains.

Angara credited the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) for backing this flexibility, noting that LGUs can utilize their Special Education Fund (SEF) and private partners can engage through Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and the Adopt-a-School Program.

“Kung saan may pondo, dapat may marunong at mabilis na tagapagpatayo,” he emphasized.

Smarter, Resilient Classrooms

Angara underscored that solving the shortage is more than a numbers game — it’s about strategic, data-driven planning. DepEd’s classroom master plan now integrates demographic trends, school-level data, and site-specific assessments to pinpoint urgent needs.

In disaster-prone regions, DepEd is shifting towards resilient architecture:

Flood-resilient designs with open ground floors for multipurpose use and elevated upper levels for uninterrupted learning.

Stilted classrooms in coastal areas like the Bicol Region, reinforced with waterproofed concrete roofs to endure typhoons.

Structures adapted to withstand extreme winds, storm surges, and seasonal flooding.

The Classroom Building Acceleration Program

DepEd has also thrown its weight behind Senate Bill No. 121, the proposed Classroom Building Acceleration Program (CAP), which calls for:

A nationally anchored master plan

Clearly defined roles for agencies, LGUs, and private partners

Priority for high-need areas

Centralized monitoring of all school-building efforts

To support this, DepEd is consolidating all LGU-led and PPP-backed projects into a central database, ensuring transparency and efficiency in tracking progress nationwide.

A Call to National Unity

For Angara, the classroom crisis is not just a government problem — it’s a national challenge that demands collective ownership. “Kailangan nating buksan ang pinto para makasali ang LGU, NGO, at iba pang handang tumulong,” he urged.

With the 2026 budget now designed to encourage multi-sector participation, the hope is that the country can finally break the cycle of shortage and delay.

In the vision laid out by the DepEd chief, a child in a mountain village in Kalinga, an island in Palawan, or a floodplain in Pampanga should no longer have to study under the shade of a tree or in a makeshift shack. Instead, they will walk into a safe, sturdy classroom — a space where dreams are built and futures are secured.

If the plan succeeds, the Philippines will move closer to fulfilling a long-delayed promise: that in the classroom of the nation’s future, no child is left standing outside the door.

If you want, I can also create a more hard-hitting, investigative-style version of this piece that digs into the historical backlog numbers and the possible risks to Angara’s plan. That would make it even more compelling for an online journalism audience.

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