More than half of 45,000 schools lack principals as most fail qualifying exam -- DepEd

An estimated 23,000 schools do not have principals as most applicants fail the qualifying examination, the Department of Education (DepEd) said Friday during its budget hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.

DepEd Secretary Sonny Angara said they are considering relaxing the National Assessment for School Heads (NASH), in hopes that more principals could be hired and assigned to these schools.

“The finding from EDCOMM 2 led to certain moves as relaxing the NASH exam… so that more principals could be hired,” Angara said.

“... So what we did is we gave them the chance to—if they failed only certain parts or certain domains, they don’t have to take the exam again, they can just try to, in a way, remediate and pass the professional development area or intervention that’s needed,” he added.

In 2026, a total of 6,000 principal positions were secured, according to Angara. He noted that the agency is fast-tracking the filling of these positions, although only a few applicants have passed so far.

According to DepEd Undersecretary Wilfredo Cabral, out of the over 45,000 schools in the country, 22,000 have school principals.

Despite the shortage of school principals, Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian raised concerns over the zero budget for new principal positions in DepEd's proposed 2027 budget.

DepEd said they actually requested a budget for the creation of more than 14,000 school principal positions next year, but were not provided with funding. The agency eyes the promotion or reclassification of teachers as one of the ways to fill the vacancies.

“We actually requested for additional position… of more than 14,000 school principal positions for 2027, but it was not provided with budget. Nonetheless, by that time through reclassification, may mapo-promote for school principal under expanded career progression,” Cabral said.

(We actually requested for additional positions… of more than 14,000 school principal positions for 2027, but it was not provided with a budget. Nonetheless, by that time, through reclassification, some teachers will be promoted to school principal under expanded career progression.)

Cabral explained that for fiscal year 2027, DepEd targets to create more than 14,000 school principal items, which would require an estimated P10.5 billion.

New school counselor, teacher posts

Following concerns over school safety and incidents of bullying and gun violence, the government funded the creation of 10,000 school counselor associate (SCA) positions.

According to Angara, 5,447 or 54 percent of the vacancies have already been filled to date, while the remaining 45 percent of unfilled positions are undergoing the hiring process.

The agency targets to fill all positions by December 2026.

Under the 2027 budget, DepEd said it has already requested the creation of an additional 1,800 SCA positions, which is equivalent to P519 million.

Meanwhile, for teaching positions, more than 14,000 new items are targeted for creation next year.

During the budget hearing, the issue of teachers for Special Needs Education (SNED) was also raised, emphasizing the shortage given the large number of children under SNED.

According to DepEd, to date, there are over 6,000 SNED teachers across different plantillas, but noted that receiving teachers are currently undergoing training.

To meet the ideal 1:5 teacher-to-student ratio for around 400,000 SNED learners, the agency yielded to Senator Bam Aquino when asked to confirm if this means around 80,000 more teachers are needed. —RF, GMA News