Education Secretary Sonny Angara has ordered a sweeping audit of classrooms built by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) after discovering that more than 1,000 of the projects turned over to the Department of Education (DepEd) were unfinished.
In an interview with dzRH on Friday, September 19, Angara said some classrooms lacked basic features such as paint and electricity, rendering them unusable. “We are seeing incomplete (classroom projects). It’s not totally a ghost, but the classrooms are not finished… It’s not being used because the classroom is not fully completed,” he explained.
DepEd is now verifying whether these incomplete structures were already fully paid for, with Angara directing officials to submit detailed reports on ghost or unfinished buildings. A memorandum issued last September 12 by DepEd Assistant Secretary Aurelio Paulo Bartolome instructed all regional directors, school division superintendents, and district supervisors to report irregularities such as construction stoppages, missing deliveries, or structural defects. These consolidated findings, Bartolome said, will guide “corrective action, demand accountability and ensure learners receive safe and functional classrooms.”
Angara also questioned the high cost of DPWH-led projects, ranging from ₱2.5 to ₱3.7 million per classroom, despite civil society groups and private organizations managing to build cheaper ones—sometimes with volunteer labor. He suggested shifting classroom construction to local government units (LGUs), which he believes have the capacity and funding to prioritize schools better than DPWH, whose projects often move slowly.
Despite a nationwide backlog of more than 165,000 classrooms, DepEd can only build around 4,000 this year, Angara admitted. He warned, “If we don’t change our system, we won’t be able to solve it. Classroom backlogs will increase.”
To close the gap, DepEd is seeking additional funding from Congress to complete DPWH’s unfinished projects. Angara has also pushed for a realignment of government funds, calling for a bigger slice of the budget to go to education.
This position is echoed by the Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA), whose chairperson, Betty Cernol-McCann, urged the government to redirect flood control budgets to education. “We urge the government to swiftly reallocate funds for public works to increase education budgets for scholarships, student and teacher subsidy programs and provide essential support to strengthen both public and private education,” the group said in a statement.
Alongside DepEd’s proposed ₱928.52-billion allocation for 2026, Angara is pushing for an additional ₱134.5 billion to help address the crisis in classroom infrastructure.
