Solving classroom congestion
National enrollment declined by 2.1 percent in school year 2025–2026. Yet in some schools, enrollment increased in the hundreds overnight. Four of the largest increases were in Cavite. After one summer, Timalan Hillsview Integrated School in Naic had 1,684 more students enrolling compared to last school year. Two schools in Imus had 926 and 868 more; Malainen Bago Integrated School, also in Naic, had 773 more. Each new learner needed a seat, a teacher, and space to learn.
Those numbers should change how we discuss classroom shortages. At 40 learners per classroom, a school gaining 400 children needs roughly 10 additional classrooms. An increase of 1,684 means about 43 new classrooms are needed, in a system where it takes about two years to construct one.
We have seen the consequences firsthand in Naic. When the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2) visited Calubcob Elementary School, approximately 1,800 children were being accommodated in two standard classrooms and six makeshift ones. Across the municipality, public schools serve more than 12,000 learners from at least 48 housing sites. Across several schools, combined enrollment rose by more than 5,400 between March and June 2026. Rooms intended for 40 learners have held as many as 80. Despite this, students could only go to school thrice a week— and in shortened hours— M-W-F, or T-Th-S. For the other days, children as young as 5 years old need to study at home through modules.
Cavite, and Naic in particular, should be a wake-up call. We cannot treat a surge of this size as an unexpected event when housing projects are very clearly years in the making. Children do not arrive at school without warning. Other parts of government knew where families were being relocated or where new housing was coming up. Except that coordination does not happen. The education system should have had the information, the time, and the resources to prepare before the children actually arrived.
We need to examine migration, transfers between public and private schools, the condition of existing buildings, and the uneven distribution of classrooms. In June 2025, data presented to Edcom 2 identified 58 National Housing Authority projects with more than 1,500 units each, comprising 167,120 units. Most were in Metro Manila and surrounding provinces already experiencing pressure on school capacity. At two learners per unit, these projects could generate demand for more than 330,000 school places. That is a planning scenario, not an actual count.
The immediate priority is relief for schools already bearing the burden. The Department of Education (DepEd) should identify where enrollment is rising fastest, which schools have usable rooms, and which projects can be completed in time. Where classrooms cannot be ready immediately, the response should include safe temporary space, teachers, furniture, and operating funds. These arrangements must have an end date and a funded path to permanent facilities. Children in overcrowded rooms cannot be asked to wait for interagency processes to finish.
Prevention also requires its own timetable. The Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) and its housing agencies should provide DepEd and local governments with project locations, expected occupancy dates, unit counts, and projected household profiles before families move in. DepEd’s divisions should translate that information into school-level enrollment forecasts, including the likely effects on neighboring schools and successive phases of development. These forecasts should be updated against actual enrollment and used to trigger DepEd’s decisions and priorities when it comes to sites, classrooms, teachers, and budgets well ahead of the next school year.
The coordination must happen before project approval and continue through construction and occupancy. DepEd should be at the table when housing locations and timelines are set, while DHSUD and local governments should be accountable for the education requirements their projects create. Where schools are already full, a credible plan for additional capacity should accompany the housing plan.
Edcom 2 has raised this consistently with DHSUD, DepEd, and the Department of the Interior and Local Government in the last three years. Yet up to today, we await the action of the housing agencies on what remedies may be made available to support the schools—and especially the students—who remain affected in their learning and well-being day in and out.
The resolve and resources allocated to address classroom congestion must be sustained for the next five years to enable a genuine catch-up. But we must also prevent congestion from happening in the first place, through proper coordination and planning; and the test of genuine coordination is whether the classroom, the seats, and the teachers, arrive before the students do. When thousands of children suddenly need to enroll in another school, caught off guard, and without resources to accommodate them, our children and teachers bear the consequences.
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Karol Mark Yee is the executive director of Edcom 2.
