Lack of classrooms hounds Western Visayas schools

ILOILO CITY—The Department of Education (DepEd) in Western Visayas (DepEd-6) is in need of around 14,000 additional classrooms to keep up with the number of students in the region.

DepEd-6 Director Ramir Uytico, during the Kapihan sa Bagong Pilipinas forum on Oct. 15, said the 62,263 instructional classrooms in the region listed in the agency’s national school building inventory for school year 2022 to 2023 were insufficient to meet the current demands of the student population.

The list included 40,147 classrooms for elementary pupils, 14,956 for junior high school students and 7,160 for senior high school students.

According to DepEd-6, the region has over 1.9 million learners for school year 2024 to 2025. These involved 119,964 pupils in kindergarten, 906,683 elementary pupils, 579,301 in junior high school and 301,549 in senior high school.

Leonerico Barredo, chief of DepEd-6 Educational Support Services Division chief, revealed that 24,675 classrooms in the region have actually been flagged for safety risks, including 11,365 needing major repairs and 11,551 needing minor repairs.

Unsafe

He said 1,443 classrooms were considered unsafe and recommended to be condemned while 316 others had either already been condemned or set for demolition.

He said that as of September 2024, the region was already in need of 14,178 additional classrooms.

The DepEd Division of Negros Occidental would need more than half of this number, with 7,837 classrooms, followed by the Division of Iloilo, which would need 1,600 classrooms for the entire province, except the component city of Passi.

Uytico said they have repeatedly raised the urgency of addressing the classroom shortage with Congress during budget hearings.

“We have attended every budget hearing in the [House of Representatives] and the Senate, and the discussions are endless. Our education support services, our superintendents monitor the inventory of our school buildings. We have a data repository. We submit that to the [DepEd] central office, and they take a look at it. But the word there is prioritization,” he said.

“Even if this is the deficiency, this [on the other hand] is just the budget. It’s like in a family, where there is a lack, but [resources] are limited,” he added.

Causes of delay

Uytico also pointed to numerous issues that could delay efforts to build more school buildings, including land ownership.

“When a school in a municipality is needing more classrooms, they cannot be given automatically because there needs to be validation. They would have to look at land ownership, because there are cases now where the DepEd would be ejected because [we] do not own the land. If the DepEd does not own [the land], it would be more difficult for us,” Uytico said.

DepEd-6 was now using an estate fund, managed by the regional office, to build seven new classrooms, but Uytico admitted this, coupled with their existing funding, would not be enough.

DepEd-Iloilo Superintendent Ernesto Servillon Jr., said he and his fellow DepEd division heads in the region have been seeking partnerships with the private sector, in addition to the existing assistance of repairs and new buildings provided by host local governments.

Anthony Liobet, DepEd Negros Occidental superintendent, said they were able to build additional school buildings in Silay City because of donations made by the province’s Montinola family and by the Security Bank.

Liobet said P100 million from the Special Education Fund of Silay City has also been used for repairs and construction of school buildings.