EDITORIAL - Still, school shortages

With the school opening just two weeks away, the public school system again faces shortages of basic components of education: teachers and classrooms.

The Department of Education has reported that the country still lacks 165,000 classrooms and approximately 30,000 teachers. DepEd officials have explained that while more classrooms continue to be built and thousands of additional teachers hired, the increase cannot keep up with the pace of student population growth.

In just 12 years, the classroom shortage has tripled, from 55,000 to the current 165,000. DepEd officials say public schools have resorted not only to double but even triple shifts per day, which usually means shorter hours in the classroom per shift.

Students squeezed into triple shifts can even consider themselves lucky. In some schools, there are students who can no longer be accommodated due to the lack of classrooms, according to DepEd officials.

Economic hardships arising from the COVID pandemic significantly expanded the student population in public schools. Parents who saw their incomes shrink were forced to transfer their children from private schools to the tuition-free public school system. Many of these students have not returned to private schools, where tuition rates typically increase every year.

The prolonged pandemic lockdowns also forced the closure of many private schools, which added further to the student population in state-run schools. The lack of teachers can also force the existing pool of educators to handle larger class sizes.

A large class is unwieldy and burdensome for teachers to handle. It is hardly conducive to improving the quality of education, which is urgently needed as international assessments show Filipino students ranking low in academic competencies.

The nation awaits the results of the third Philippine participation in the Program for International Student Assessment. The first two times that the country participated in the PISA, the 15-year-old Filipino students ranked at the bottom in mathematics, science and reading comprehension.

The PISA results validated observations that Philippine education is in crisis. Addressing this crisis includes providing a proper environment for learning.

Budget priorities, however, show that the government is blind to this national crisis. Against constitutional provisions, the Department of Public Works and Highways has a higher appropriation for 2025 than the entire education sector, even with the first-ever inclusion of certain specialized schools such as the Philippine Military Academy and the National Defense College of the Philippines under education.

The Department of Education itself suffered a budget cut of nearly P12 billion for 2025 – funds that were supposed to finance computerization programs in DepEd-run schools.

When it comes to education, the government must show that it is shifting to crisis mode.