DepEd wants to distribute school funds to local gov’ts
The Department of Education (DepEd) has asked the 20th Congress to grant the agency more flexibility to give classroom funds to local governments.
“That’s what we want Congress to change in 2026, to give us flexibility with our budget so that we can give funds to local government units to build more classrooms,” Education Secretary Sonny Angara said.
Amid the rainy season, Angara said funding for repairs is there now, but it can only be done when classrooms are affected by typhoons.
He said the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has turned over 1,000 classrooms to the DepEd, although they were found to be “incomplete.”
“This is a man-made calamity,” Angara said. “The classrooms weren’t finished.”
“They’re not totally ghost projects, but they weren’t completed … What was reported to me was that there are over 1,000 classrooms like this,” Angara said in an interview on dzRH on Friday.
“I saw some in the provinces that were turned over but weren’t painted or didn’t have electricity,” Angara added, though he did not say where the projects were or when they were turned over.
The DepEd chief estimated that DPWH-built classrooms cost between P2.5 and 3.7 million.
He added that, while the funding for classroom construction was under the DepEd’s budget, it was the DPWH that bid out the projects to contractors.
Angara has already ordered Assistant Secretary Aurelio Paulo Bartolome to identify irregularities in infrastructure projects, such as prolonged stoppage, incomplete delivery, and structural defects.
