Press Release
December 8, 2009

BUILD MORE SCHOOL BUILDINGS, IMPROVE
RP SCHOOL SYSTEM--ANGARA

As Senate hears the 2010 budget for the DepEd's school building program today Sen. Edgardo Angara is pushing for the allocation of more funds for the construction of school buildings to reduce classroom-student ratio to ideal proportions. Angara considers the country's wide classroom-student gap a setback to efforts in improving the quality of education for Filipinos.

"40% of the P11.30 Billion fund to tackle the backlog in the education system will be for classroom building alone. This is just enough to cover a shortage of 6,000 classrooms. Based on DepEd records, the total nationwide classroom shortage is 41,197 and rising; at current prices, the government will need at least P16 Billion of additional funding to fully address the classroom shortage," said Angara, former president of the University of the Philippines.

The national classroom-student ratio for elementary and secondary public schools is still far from the ideal 1:30 ratio, due largely to the free education program, which has not yet been met by a corresponding increase in the number of classrooms.

The current ratio is averaging at 1:50 each for a double-shift scenario daily. The actual class size in public schools ranges from 60 to 100, which lags behind the class size in Thailand (18), Malaysia (19), China (24), Taiwan (14) and Indonesia (22). Furthermore, 20% of the country's classrooms have no proper ventilation, 27% have no lighting, 55% have no electricity and 25% have no ceilings. In 2005 20% of elementary and high schools did not have science laboratories.

Angara proposes a comprehensive school building program through build-operate-transfer, build-transfer, build-lease-transfer or rehabilitate-operate-transfer schemes with pre-qualified private contractors for the design, financing, construction and maintenance of school buildings.

Angara, Chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, is hopeful that "with the passage of this bill and the budget allocation for 2010, class sizes be reduced to a more manageable size for a more conducive learning environment, which will result in improved quality of education."

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