Falling fertility rate may ease school crowding, but it’s not enough

Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!

Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.

Visit Suniway.ph to learn

A PIDS paper projects public elementary school enrollment to decline by 2040, from the current 18 million to between 10.5 and 12.8 million, depending on changes in fertility rates 

MANILA, Philippines – The trend of Filipino women having fewer children may decongest and help ease classroom shortages. 

This is according to research published by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) in June 2025. 

Citing data from the National Demographic and Health Survey (2022), total fertility rate (TFR) for Filipino women aged 15 to 49 — considered the reproductive age —  fell sharply to 1.9 in 2022 from 3.0 in 2013. The TFR is a measure of fertility that indicates the average number of children that a woman will bear. 

Development economists generally set a TFR of 2.1 as the replacement rate required for population maintenance or keeping a population steady. This means the population would neither grow nor shrink if a woman had at least two children.

Across the Philippines, K-12 schools face high student-teacher ratios. 

Classrooms are still about twice as crowded compared to average class sizes in developed countries, despite classroom-student ratios declining in the last decade. In 2021, on average, one elementary classroom would have had  32 students from housing at least 39 in 2010. A junior high school classroom in 2021 housed 44 students, down from 54 in 2010.

Among the most congested schools are those in Metro Manila and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

Enrollment projections by 2040

The PIDS paper projects public elementary school enrollment to decline by 2040, from the current 18 million to between 10.5 and 12.8 million, depending on changes in fertility rates. 

For public junior and senior high schools, researchers project that total combined enrollment will level off, with the expected increased enrollment in some areas, namely Quezon City and Basilan, offset by declining enrollment in others.

Taken together, the projections predict a generally declining trend in total public school enrollment across regions until 2040. The authors believe this trend is likely to continue until 2060 even if TFR returns to replacement rate, except in BARMM where they project increased public school enrollment. 

Billions needed for new classrooms 

PIDS researchers estimate the government needs to build between 6,000 to 8,000 new classrooms yearly in the next 15 years to address classroom deficits by 2040. The goal of having 90,000 to 120,000 new classrooms by 2040 would cost around P18 billion up to P24 billion, which is within the budget the government allocates for classroom construction.

The House of Representatives in September approved the Department of Education’s (DepEd) P793.1 billion budget, the largest share in the proposed national budget for 2025. Of that, P29.3 billion is earmarked for basic education facilities, which includes classroom construction.

The goal of having up to 120,000 new classrooms by 2040 is significantly less than the 165,443 recommended by The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) in January of this year. This difference may be due to differing goals on class sizes, while EDCOM 2 aims to house 25 to 45 learners in a single classroom, PIDS researchers said each classroom built can serve around 40 to 50 is more cost-effective given limited financial resources. 

Projected 2040 public school classroom deficit by province

From PIDS Paper

Classrooms are needed most at the elementary level (70,187), followed by the junior high school level (30,724), while classroom requirement for the senior high school level is significantly lower at 7,425 classrooms. Most of these are needed in Metro Manila and neighboring provinces in Calabarzon and Central Luzon, as well as in Cebu and Davao del Sur.

Bottlenecks in classroom construction 

Beyond sufficient allocation of financial resources for the construction of new classrooms, PIDS recommends a long-term school building construction masterplan to better facilitate planning. 

For the 2018/2019 national budget school construction took 2.9 years on average from budget appropriation to actual construction. The 99% completed time has decreased from 6 years in 2014/2015 to 5 years in the 2018/2019 cycle. 

The primary time inflicting snag in construction is in the planning phase, the study finds. Consistent difficulty in obtaining critical information from the three main agencies that regulate classroom construction, DepEd, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Department of Economy Planning and Development (formerly National Economic and Development Authority).

Requirements and regulations from these three agencies are in what the authors call “siloed systems,” meaning planners must check and comply with three separate, sometimes conflicting, sets of rules.

PIDS researchers document many of these issues. For example DPWH’s Standard Design Plans released in 2018, may not be consistent with DepEd’s own minimum performance standards and specifications for DepEd school buildings.

PIDS stresses that further interventions require greater coordination and cooperation among these concerned agencies and availability of skilled personnel to implement them.

The decline in TFR and the resulting drop in student population could give policymakers an opportunity to catch up on the classroom shortage, provided underlying issues are addressed. – Rappler.com

Ty Javier is an Economics undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin. Before interning at Rappler, he was a senior staff writer and photographer at The Daily Cardinal, specializing in university and campaign finances, economic policy and transit. To get out of the house, Ty enjoys playing beach volleyball and multi-day backpacking trips in the mountains.