Fewer than 2,500 security guards currently watch over the country’s roughly 48,000 public schools, a shortfall the Department of Education wants to close with an P8-billion request now headed to Congress.
Education Secretary Sonny Angara laid out the funding pitch on Wednesday, July 15, during a chance interview at Manila Science High School, where the National Safety Schools Summit and Safety Drill was launched. The money would cover guards and metal detectors across the school system. <br>”We are proposing funds for hiring security guards. We are proposing funds for metal detectors, ideally P8 billion for the entire schools,” he said.
Weapons still slip past existing checks, Angara acknowledged, which is why the department is rethinking how it screens students. “On the part of the DepEd, we are really trying to improve our protocols. We have bag searches, we have metal detectors. Schools have security guards, and yet there are still incidents where knives are hidden in shoes, in underwear, so they still get in. So we really have to be very creative and adjust to what the perpetrators are doing,” he said.
Rather than impose a uniform template, Angara instructed every public school to draft threat response plans suited to its own setting, prioritizing localized immediate action. He framed the effort as shared work beyond the department: “This fight is not DepEd’s fight alone. It is a challenge we must face together, especially given the complexities we have seen in recent weeks. We rely on the support of our parents, families, communities, local governments and our partners across all levels of government to ensure that schools remain safe havens.”
Wednesday’s rollout put students, staff and local officials through coordinated lockout, lockdown and evacuation exercises. Angara said the drills would recur across the country on a regular basis, with regional officials on hand to work out timelines and logistical needs. The department’s first active shooter drill had been pushed back the previous week when Typhoon Inday forced class suspensions.
Police presence factors heavily into the strategy. Angara tied it to a post-pandemic rise in gang activity, saying visible officers discourage groups from forming. He credited the Philippine National Police and the Bureau of Fire Protection for maintaining that presence, and pointed to the Department of the Interior and Local Government’s round-the-clock 911 hotline as another layer of emergency response.
The secretary also pushed to curb students’ exposure to online dangers, naming social media platforms, groomers and recruiters tied to terrorism among the threats. He argued that violent games warrant restriction: “Some games are very violent because like Roblox, which is about organizing a gang, so I think those things should be banned, or regulated.” Coordination with churches and communities forms part of the same approach, he said.
Whether to lower the minimum age of criminal liability to 12 from 15 is a matter Angara left to lawmakers. He sought to reassure parents that violent incidents remain uncommon relative to the size of the system, which spans more than 48,000 campuses.
Quezon City is moving on a parallel track. Local police and the city government plan simulation drills so students can react to shootings and other emergencies, with QCPD director Brig. Gen. Randy Glenn Silvio tentatively scheduling an active shooter exercise for July 17. Mayor Joy Belmonte has pressed to keep campuses safe, and Silvio said the drills would also address stabbings, bomb threats and riots.
Separately, a priority administration measure targeting the country’s most remote campuses has reached Malacañang. Palace press officer Claire Castro said the enrolled copy of the Last Mile and Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged and Conflict Affected Areas Schools Act was transmitted on June 25. The bill calls for building basic education schools and access roads in isolated, disadvantaged and conflict-affected areas.
Sen. Loren Legarda, principal author of the Senate version, has said distance, weak infrastructure and thin public services keep quality education out of reach for children in remote areas. Her bill would require the education department to adopt a three-kilometer walkable-distance or safe-transport standard and to publish a national map of such schools within a year.
Conditions in these schools remain stark, according to Batangas 6th district Rep. Ryan Recto, who wrote in his explanatory note that many so-called last mile schools operate without basic utilities. Roughly 1,500 run without electricity and about 1,000 without toilets, he said, with many serving indigenous communities in makeshift rooms that lack funding for repairs.
