Western Visayas faces shortage of over 14K classrooms

By Rjay Zuriaga Castor

Some schools in Western Visayas are confronted with the need to implement a hybrid setup and half-day scheme in their classes to mitigate the shortage of over 14,000 classrooms in the region.

The Department of Education Western Visayas (DepEd-6) told Daily Guardian that the region requires an additional 14,182 classrooms to meet the ideal student-teacher ratio.

“This is not just alarming in Western Visayas because the classroom shortage is a nationwide problem,” Hernani Escullar Jr., DepEd-6 information officer, said on Thursday, August 8.

Escullar said that the figures from the Basic Education Learning Continuity and Recovery Plan as of June this year had no significant change from last year’s data.

DepEd-6 has not provided a breakdown of the shortage per province.

In March 2023, DepEd-6 said that the region requires a total of 13,297 additional classrooms to address the existing gap in educational facilities.

Escullar said the classroom shortage is based on the reported number of classrooms needed by schools based on their enrollment and teacher-student ratio.

In the DepEd guidelines, the recommended class sizes are a maximum of 30 learners for kindergarten, 35 for grades 1 to 3, 45 for grades 4 to 10, and 40 for grades 11 and 12.

Escullar stressed that at their level in the regional office, they cannot give a one-size-fits-all solution to the 4,048 public elementary and secondary schools in the region.

“The schools have the power to make the necessary adjustments in their area of responsibility. It’s the school that determines the intervention since they know the situation on the ground,” he explained.

He mentioned that some schools conduct their classes in multiple shifts or split the class into two groups to ensure that each group has in-person classes every day.

As of August 6, Escullar said the region has a total of 1,880,537 enrollees, with 1,013,770 in elementary, 570,602 in junior high school, and 296,758 in senior high school.

“We are doing everything to ensure the learning continuity of our students and that the learning competencies are given to them,” he added.

In 2023, DepEd aimed for 79 percent of the country’s public schools for Grades 1 to 10, or 39,071 schools, to meet the standard classroom ratio. For the senior high school, the target was 62 percent or 4,633 schools.

However, by the end of 2023, only 47 percent of Grades 1 to 10 schools, or 22,273 schools, and 39 percent, or 2,749 schools in the senior high, had achieved this target.

DepEd also planned to construct 6,379 classrooms in 2023, but only 192 were completed, with 4,391 still under construction.

Looking ahead, DepEd plans to build 1,628 new classrooms in 2024 and an additional 6,000 in 2025.