By Ronald Mendoza
(First of two parts)
Given the urgency of responding to myriad education challenges, DepEd has opened and ramped up strategic partnerships in the department:
Khan Academy—an AI-powered digital application supporting student learning and teacher productivity—has now rolled out in over 2,300 DepEd schools.
The Dynamic Learning Program—a learning modality designed by development partners to sustain learning continuity amid weather-related disruptions and help address classroom congestion—is set to be piloted across more than 200 DepEd schools to inform potential evidence-based nationwide scaling.
In 2026, in partnership with the ASEAN Foundation and Google.org, the Department aims to launch an ambitious AI training pipeline targeting approximately 1 million learners, 300,000 teachers, and 200,000 parents.
DepEd will also launch strategic partnerships with experts in the Digital Education Council and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to advance AI integration in the basic education system in the Philippines.
The Evidence for Education coalition, composed of about 20 think tanks, academia, and civil society organizations, is also working with DepEd to drive transparency, accountability, and more robust science and evidence to inform DepEd policies and investments for stronger improvements in learning outcomes.
The challenges remain
These efforts matter, but persistent gaps in basic education infrastructure still paint a sobering picture. DepEd faces a classroom deficit of at least 165,000 (based on estimates in 2022).
Between 2022 and 2024, an average of nearly 8,000 classrooms were destroyed or damaged by natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes each year. On top of this, nearly 220,000 classrooms, around 34 percent of DepEd’s total inventory, require major repairs.
In response to the scale of this challenge, DepEd is pursuing its most ambitious partnerships with the private sector to address these gaps in the shortest possible time.
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure are being reintroduced in DepEd after a hiatus of over a decade. PPPs offer a useful mechanism for frontloading the construction of large numbers of classrooms, engaging triple-A contractors, and financing by the private sector, paid in tranches over the medium term (typically 10 years).
Through PPPs, DepEd leverages private sector financing and infrastructure delivery expertise, while governance of basic education in the Philippines remains the responsibility of the government.
Momentum faded
DepEd has done this before, under President Aquino in 2013. The PPP for School Infrastructure Project (PSIP1 and PSIP2) produced over 13,000 classrooms that helped reduce the classroom gap over a decade ago.
Since then, classroom construction in DepEd has not caught up with the rising demand.
From 2022 to 2024, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), which until recently delivered most of DepEd’s classroom construction, completed an average of about 6,000 classrooms annually, including projects funded in earlier years.
As DPWH reforms are being introduced, the medium-term prospects suggest only about 2000 classrooms produced per year.
This is clearly not even enough to match the estimated 11,000 classrooms required to absorb the additional youth entering the basic education system each year.
At this pace, the 165,000-classroom deficit, compounded by rising enrollment and growing climate-related damage to schools, will further deepen the country’s education infrastructure gap.
PPPs are therefore crucial to the reform effort to hit critical mass on classroom construction.
Plans take shape
In early 2025, President Marcos convened his economic team along with DepEd officials to create a “green lane” for PPPs in education, reflecting the urgency of these investments and in a bid to accelerate the country’s response to augment and modernize learning spaces for its over 25 million learners.
This has led to DepEd’s plan to build over 100,000 classrooms in three tranches: PSIP3 (16,000), PSIP4 (40,000), and PSIP5 (50,000). DepEd plans to complement this with other tools to help decongest DepEd schools (e.g. vouchers, leasing, blended learning).
PSIP3 was approved by the Investment Coordinating Committee in early December 2025. Once approved by the President, PSIP3 is expected to undergo competitive bidding in 2026, and start to produce over 16,000 classrooms in 2027 into 2028.
Given the recent concerns over good governance in infrastructure spending, there are additional important reasons for tapping PPPs over conventional procurement.
These will be tackled in a follow up article, noting the rigorous evaluation done in partnership with multilateral financing institutions (ADB and World Bank) that PPPs undergo, the stronger value-for-money argument under PPP modality, and the DepEd’s efforts to boost partnerships and transparency in basic education through its Project Bukas (www.deped.gov.ph/paaralang-bukas/).
Ronald Mendoza is Undersecretary for Strategic Management, Department of Education and he previously served as Dean and Professor with the Ateneo School of Government.
