Phl schools lack more than 143,000 classrooms this year

MANILA, Philippines –  The public school system lacks 143,281 classrooms this year, Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara said yesterday.

Angara, who chairs the House committee on technical and higher education, said the government plans to ease the severe classroom shortage by leasing 16,051 classrooms from private schools through tuition vouchers and by building 14,243 rooms.

However, the money for the construction of new classrooms was affected by the decision of the administration’s economic managers to tighten infrastructure spending in the first four months of the year, he said.

“Government disbursed only P34.8 billion for infrastructure, an amount that is 53 percent – or almost P40 billion – lower than what was spent during the same period last year and an anemic 14 percent of the current full-year program,” he said.

He added that the early passage of the 2011 budget in December 2010 should have given the government a head start in construction, which would have also allowed it to take advantage of the good construction weather in the first half of the year.

“Unfortunately, the government forfeited this advantage when it slowed down spending for infrastructure in the first four months,” he stressed.

Government officials justified the cautious release of infrastructure funds to the recalibration of bidding processes to weed out wastage and corruption.

Angara said the construction of new classrooms should have been spared from the new policy on infrastructure spending. “Education should have been spared because the building of a classroom is not the Three Gorges Dam project that would require complicated engineering and financial review.”

Perhaps fearing that fiscal austerity would drag down economic growth, government reopened the spigots for infrastructure funds last month, with the budget department announcing on May 9 that it has released P7 billion to the Department of Education for the repair of 8,997 classrooms.

Angara said the release of the money 28 days before last Monday’s resumption of classes, meant that “only a few classrooms were ready for school opening.”

Still, he lauded the decision to release the funds, saying, “It means the money is already there and although delayed, it is the biggest allocation in history.”

He said a catch-up school building program by DepEd could reverse the effects of the delay “and this should be its priority as an estimated 1.14 million students – on two shifts of 40 per class – will benefit from the new 14,243 classrooms.”

He also called for the release of whatever balance is left in the P11.3-billion lump sum in the 2011 national budget for the requirements of the public school system.

Angara said public schools also lack 101,612 teachers, 2.72 million chairs, 119,296 toilets, and 66.63 million textbooks. –Jess Diaz (The Philippine Star)