Region II (Cagayan Valley, often searched as Region 2) lacked 2,501 classrooms in 2023, according to DepEd’s classroom shortage data as published in the EDCOM II classroom construction dashboard. That is 1.5% of the country’s shortage of 165,443 classrooms, the second smallest of the 18 regions. For every 1,000 learners enrolled in SY 2024-25 the region is short 3.2 classrooms, less than half the national rate of 7.4 and the second lowest among the regions. Only 902 of its 2,535 public schools in the shortage data, 35.6%, lack classrooms at all.

What sets Region II apart is the School Building Program (SBP) 2026. The list holds 1,977 classrooms for the region, equal to 79.0% of its shortage, against 19.6% nationally; only Region I has a larger list relative to its shortage. Yet the classrooms do not follow the shortage school by school. Nearly half of them, 908, are listed for schools that had no shortage in 2023, and Nueva Vizcaya, the division with the highest shortage rate, has the lowest coverage in the region.

The figures below, from the cleaned school-level data behind the dashboard, cover Region II from Batanes to Nueva Vizcaya. Every file is listed on the EDCOM II classroom data page.

Key findings

  • Region II lacked 2,501 classrooms in 2023, 1.5% of the national shortage, and 35.6% of its schools had a shortage, against 54.2% nationally.
  • All nine divisions are below the national rate of 7.4 classrooms per 1,000 learners; Nueva Vizcaya and Santiago City are highest at 4.8, Tuguegarao City lowest at 1.2.
  • The SBP 2026 list holds 1,977 classrooms for the region, 79.0% of its shortage against 19.6% nationally, and 961 of them are PSIP III public-private partnership classrooms.
  • School by school, 908 of those classrooms (45.9%) go to schools with no 2023 shortage, and 235 such schools receive classrooms, against 205 schools that do have a shortage.
  • Nueva Vizcaya has the region’s highest shortage rate and its lowest coverage, 25.7%, while the City of Ilagan’s list equals 271.1% of its shortage.
  • Last Mile Schools are far more likely to lack classrooms than other schools in the region, 57.2% against 31.2%, but less likely to be on the 2026 list, 12.8% against 18.3%.
  • 900 schools (35.5%) report a building for condemnation or demolition, above the national 28.9%, while only nine schools hold classes in shifts.

Region II against the country

The table puts the region’s main indicators beside the national figures, each defined the same way in both columns.

Indicator Region II Philippines
Schools in the 2023 shortage data 2,535 47,659
Schools with a classroom shortage 35.6% 54.2%
Classroom shortage (2023) 2,501 165,443
Shortage per 1,000 learners 3.2 7.4
SBP 2026 classrooms 1,977 32,419
SBP 2026 classrooms as a share of the shortage 79.0% 19.6%
Schools with a shortage that get any SBP 2026 classroom 22.7% 13.3%
Schools with two or more shifts (SY 2024-25) 0.4% 4.3%
Median learners per classroom, elementary 21.6 24.9
Last Mile Schools 17.0% 18.5%
Schools using makeshift rooms (2023) 16.7% 29.0%
Schools with a building for condemnation or demolition 35.5% 28.9%

On most rows Region II is under less strain than the country: fewer schools with a shortage, a lower rate per learner, fewer schools on shifts, less crowded elementary classrooms and fewer makeshift rooms. Two rows go the other way. Its SBP 2026 classrooms equal 79.0% of its shortage, about four times the national share, and 35.5% of its schools have a building for condemnation or demolition, against 28.9% nationally.

Kindergarten to Grade 10 accounts for 1,989 classrooms of the shortage and senior high school for 512, or 20.5%: about one classroom in five that the region lacks is for Grades 11 and 12. The shortage is mostly rural. The region’s 2,304 rural schools carry 72.1% of it, and the gap between urban and rural rates is narrow, 3.9 classrooms per 1,000 learners in the 228 urban schools against 3.0 in rural ones. Region II also has spare rooms: 1,125 schools report more Kindergarten to Grade 10 classrooms than they need, 3,558 in all, more than the region’s entire shortage. A spare room in one school, though, does nothing for a crowded school in the next town.

Classroom shortage by division in Region II

Region II has nine schools divisions: five provincial divisions, Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino and Batanes, and four city divisions, Tuguegarao City, the City of Ilagan, Cauayan City and Santiago City. The chart ranks them by classrooms short per 1,000 learners.

Horizontal bar chart of the 2023 classroom shortage per 1,000 learners in Region II’s nine divisions. Nueva Vizcaya (510 classrooms) and Santiago City (145) are highest at 4.8, followed by Cauayan City at 4.3; Isabela, with the largest count, 817, is at 3.1 and Cagayan at 2.6; Batanes is at 1.8 and Tuguegarao City lowest at 1.2. Every division is below the national line of 7.4, and only the top three are above the regional 3.2.
Figure 1. Classroom shortage per 1,000 learners by division, Region II, 2023 shortage and SY 2024-25 learners. Chart: © 2026 Mark Anthony Llego, NASH Reviewer. Download the full-resolution chart (PNG).

No division reaches the national line. Three are above the regional rate of 3.2: Nueva Vizcaya and Santiago City, both at 4.8, and Cauayan City at 4.3. Tuguegarao City, the regional center, is lowest at 1.2, and Batanes, the island province, is short only 7 classrooms in all.

By count, Isabela leads with 817 classrooms, 32.6% of the region’s shortage, followed by Cagayan with 591 and Nueva Vizcaya with 510. Isabela and Cagayan reach those totals through size, 881 and 806 schools, at rates near or below the region’s. Nueva Vizcaya’s 510 fall on far fewer learners, 105,078, which is why its rate is the highest.

Division Schools Learners (SY 2024-25) Classroom shortage (2023) Shortage per 1,000 learners Schools with a shortage SBP 2026 classrooms Coverage
Nueva Vizcaya 380 105,078 510 4.8 36.6% 131 25.7%
Santiago City 41 30,482 145 4.8 63.4% 96 66.0%
Cauayan City 80 33,464 145 4.3 37.5% 141 96.9%
Isabela 881 259,704 817 3.1 36.2% 629 77.0%
City of Ilagan 98 33,556 104 3.1 30.6% 281 271.1%
Quirino 187 46,299 139 3.0 42.8% 101 72.5%
Cagayan 806 230,773 591 2.6 32.3% 533 90.1%
Batanes 27 3,914 7 1.8 18.5% 21 300.0%
Tuguegarao City 35 33,890 42 1.2 37.1% 34 80.4%

Santiago City is the only division where most schools lack classrooms, 63.4%; in Batanes 18.5% do. Coverage, the division’s SBP 2026 classrooms as a share of its shortage, spreads much wider: from 25.7% in Nueva Vizcaya to 300.0% in Batanes, which has 21 classrooms on the list for a shortage of 7. The City of Ilagan also has more on the list than it is short, 281 classrooms against 104. The division totals leave out 10 SBP classrooms at three schools that have no division in the data; the regional totals include them.

Provinces and cities: Isabela, Cagayan, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino and Batanes

Region II has no highly urbanized city, so the Philippine Standard Geographic Code (PSGC) places all of its schools in five provinces. The four city divisions are counted inside their provinces here: Tuguegarao City in Cagayan, and the City of Ilagan, Cauayan City and Santiago City in Isabela.

Province or city Cities and municipalities Schools Classroom shortage (2023) Shortage per 1,000 learners SBP 2026 classrooms Coverage
Isabela 37 1,100 1,211 3.4 1,153 95.2%
Cagayan 29 841 634 2.4 570 89.9%
Nueva Vizcaya 15 380 510 4.8 132 25.9%
Quirino 6 187 139 3.0 101 72.5%
Batanes 6 27 7 1.8 21 300.0%

Isabela, with its three cities, holds 1,211 classrooms of shortage, 48.4% of the region’s, and its 1,153 SBP 2026 classrooms equal 95.2% of it. Cagayan is close behind at 89.9%. Nueva Vizcaya is the exception: the province with the highest rate, 4.8 classrooms per 1,000 learners, has 132 classrooms on the list, 25.9% of its shortage.

Among the region’s 93 cities and municipalities, Bayombong, the capital of Nueva Vizcaya, has the largest shortage, 147 classrooms. Seven of the 10 largest are in Isabela:

City or municipality Province or city Income class Schools Classroom shortage (2023) SBP 2026 classrooms Coverage
Bayombong Nueva Vizcaya 1st 31 147 22 14.9%
City of Cauayan Isabela 2nd 80 145 141 96.9%
City of Santiago Isabela 1st 41 145 96 66.0%
San Mariano Isabela 1st 48 105 29 27.6%
City of Ilagan Isabela 1st 99 104 281 271.1%
Tumauini Isabela 1st 43 72 1 1.4%
Baggao Cagayan 1st 71 60 21 35.1%
Echague Isabela 1st 65 58 137 234.7%
Palanan Isabela 1st 23 53 16 30.2%
Kayapa Nueva Vizcaya 1st 48 49 28 57.4%

Even within Isabela the list lands unevenly. Tumauini has one SBP 2026 classroom for a shortage of 72 (1.4%), while Echague has 137 for 58 (234.7%). Across the region, 25 cities and municipalities receive more classrooms than their 2023 shortage, 576 beyond it in all, and 10 with a shortage receive none, 36 classrooms between them; the largest of these is Enrile, Cagayan, short 7. The city figures follow the PSGC and the masterlist’s own municipality, so they can differ slightly from the division with the same name: the City of Ilagan counts 99 schools in the city table and 98 in its division.

Schools with the largest classroom shortages in Region II

All 10 schools with the largest shortages are secondary schools: national and comprehensive high schools, two stand-alone senior high schools and a school of arts and trades. Four of them are in the Nueva Vizcaya division. Together they are short 415 classrooms, 16.6% of the region’s shortage. The school ID lets a reader find each one in the school table.

School ID School Division City or municipality Learners (SY 2024-25) Learners per classroom Classroom shortage (2023) SBP 2026 classrooms Two or more shifts
300641 Nueva Vizcaya Gen. CHS Nueva Vizcaya Bayombong 4,680 45.4 111 16 Yes
306055 Cauayan City Stand-Alone Senior High School Cauayan City City of Cauayan 3,242 46.3 78 0 No
306105 Isabela School of Arts and Trades - Main City of Ilagan City of Ilagan 2,966 31.2 44 16 No
300646 Solano High School Nueva Vizcaya Solano 4,226 52.8 37 4 Yes
300599 Santiago City National High School Santiago City City of Santiago 4,694 46.5 35 9 No
300564 Palanan National High School Isabela Palanan 1,159 42.9 24 0 No
305942 Tumauini Stand-Alone Senior High Schol Isabela Tumauini 915 24.1 24 0 No
300528 Divisoria High School Santiago City City of Santiago 1,258 83.9 23 0 No
300618 Aritao National High School Nueva Vizcaya Aritao 2,898 44.6 20 4 No
300620 Bambang NHS Nueva Vizcaya Bambang 3,786 43.0 19 0 No

Nueva Vizcaya Gen. CHS in Bayombong has the largest shortage in the region, 111 classrooms, for 4,680 learners, and is one of only two schools in the table on shifts; it has 16 classrooms on the 2026 list. Half of the 10 are on the list, and the Isabela School of Arts and Trades - Main also has 16. Cauayan City Stand-Alone Senior High School, second with 78, has none. Bambang NHS shares 10th place with Alicia National High School in Isabela, also short 19; ties are broken by enrollment.

Beyond these schools the shortage is spread thin. The median school with a shortage lacks 2.0 classrooms, and only 34 schools are short by 10 or more, holding 29.1% of the shortage. The 254 schools with the largest shortages, the top 10% of the region’s schools, hold 67.1% of it, and 123 schools (4.9%) hold half. Philippine Classroom Shortage 2023: Where the Gap Is explains how these concentration shares are computed.

SBP 2026 classrooms in Region II

The SBP 2026 list has 467 lines for Region II, 1,977 classrooms at 444 schools, 6.1% of the national list for a region with 1.5% of the national shortage. Of these, 1,016 classrooms are funded under the General Appropriations Act (GAA) 2026, with PHP 3.15 billion. The other 961 are PSIP III classrooms, the third Public-Private Partnership for School Infrastructure Project, which is still for bidding and has no budget on the list yet. The chart sets each division’s 2023 shortage beside its 2026 classrooms.

Paired horizontal bars of the 2023 classroom shortage and SBP 2026 classrooms in Region II’s nine divisions. Isabela has 817 classrooms of shortage and 629 on the list, Cagayan 591 and 533, Nueva Vizcaya 510 and 131, Cauayan City 145 and 141, and Santiago City 145 and 96; the City of Ilagan has 104 and 281 and Batanes 7 and 21, the two divisions whose lists exceed their shortage.
Figure 2. 2023 classroom shortage and SBP 2026 classrooms by division, Region II. Chart: © 2026 Mark Anthony Llego, NASH Reviewer. Download the full-resolution chart (PNG).

In most divisions the orange bar comes close to the blue one, a picture few regions can show. Cagayan’s list, 533, nearly matches its shortage of 591, and Cauayan City’s 141 its 145. The City of Ilagan’s and Batanes’s orange bars are the longer ones. Nueva Vizcaya is the outlier in the other direction, 510 classrooms short with 131 on the list.

Modality group Lines Schools Classrooms Share of the region’s SBP classrooms
DPWH 112 112 331 16.7%
LGU 159 159 608 30.8%
DepEd 69 69 77 3.9%
PSIP III (PPP) 127 115 961 48.6%

PSIP III lines carry 961 classrooms, 48.6% of the region’s list, close to the national split, where half of the list, 16,305 classrooms, is PSIP III. Local governments implement 608 classrooms (30.8%), the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) 331 and DepEd 77. What each modality builds, and at what cost, is set out in DepEd School Building Program 2026 in Numbers.

Coverage compares totals, and in Region II the totals flatter the list. School by school, only 564 of the region’s 2026 classrooms (28.5%) fall within the receiving school’s own 2023 shortage, against 53.0% nationally, and 908 (45.9%) go to schools with no 2023 shortage. In all, 235 schools without a shortage receive classrooms, more than the 205 schools with one. Those 205 are 22.7% of the region’s schools with a shortage, above the national 13.3%, and 17 of the 28 schools short by more than 10 classrooms (60.7%) receive some. Counted this way, the 2026 list meets 22.5% of Region II’s shortage and leaves 1,937 classrooms unmet. The data do not say why so many lines go to schools without a 2023 shortage; newer enrollment, rooms to be replaced or a new school may lie behind a given line, and only the division’s records can show which. Do 2026 Classrooms Go Where the Shortage Is? applies the same school-by-school count to the whole country.

Class shifts and crowded classrooms in Region II

Shifts are rare in Region II. In SY 2024-25, nine of the 2,544 schools in the enrollment data (0.4%) held classes in two or more shifts, none of them in three. They enroll 17,283 learners, 2.2% of the region’s total. Of the nine, 88.9% had a 2023 shortage, and six receive SBP 2026 classrooms.

Classrooms are less crowded than in the country at every level. The median school has 21.6 learners per classroom in elementary, 28.3 in junior high and 27.6 in senior high, against 24.9, 32.1 and 30.6 nationally. Still, 105 schools have more than 50 learners per classroom, with 6.5% of the learners counted, and bringing each down to 50 would take at least 212 classrooms. The 50-learner measure is explained in Class Shifts and Crowded Classrooms in DepEd Schools.

The 2023 facilities data point to buildings in poor condition more than to makeshift space. Only 424 schools (16.7%) use makeshift rooms, against 29.0% nationally, but 900 schools (35.5%) report a building for condemnation or demolition, 1,655 buildings in all, against 28.9% of schools nationally.

Last Mile Schools in Region II

Of the region’s schools, 430 (17.0%) are flagged as Last Mile Schools, schools in geographically isolated, disadvantaged and conflict-affected areas and hardship posts, close to the national 18.5%. In Region II they are far more likely to lack classrooms than other schools: 57.2% have a shortage, against 31.2% of other schools in the region. They hold 468 classrooms of shortage, 18.7% of the region’s, a little more than their share of schools.

The 2026 list does not follow that need. Only 12.8% of Last Mile Schools are on it, against 18.3% of other schools, with 141 classrooms between them, and 208 Last Mile Schools with a shortage, 393 classrooms in all, receive none. DepEd’s own Last Mile School modality has five lines with 13 classrooms in the region. For the national picture, see Last Mile Schools: Classroom Need and 2026 Allocation.

What this means for school heads in Region II

Region II’s totals look reassuring; the school-by-school figures are where the work is.

  • Start with your school’s own row. The school table, searchable by school ID, puts your 2023 shortage, learners per classroom and SBP 2026 lines side by side; the EDCOM II classroom data page links it.
  • Do not read the regional coverage as your school’s. Fewer than one in four schools with a shortage, 22.7%, receive any 2026 classroom. A school that is short and not on the list should state its shortage, enrollment and learners per classroom in its next request to the division.
  • In Nueva Vizcaya, document the gap. The division has the region’s highest rate, 4.8 per 1,000 learners, and its lowest coverage, 25.7%, and four of the region’s 10 largest school shortages are there. Schools in Bayombong, Solano, Aritao and Bambang can attach their shortage and enrollment to every request to the division and the provincial government.
  • If your school is on the list without a 2023 shortage, record the reason. Write in the school improvement plan why the rooms are needed, such as enrollment growth or a building to be replaced, so the line can be explained to the community and tracked in the annual implementation plan.
  • Keep the condemned-building record current. With 35.5% of the region’s schools reporting a building for condemnation or demolition, a school about to lose a building may soon be short of rooms that its 2023 figure does not show.

How these numbers were made

The data are the cleaned tables behind the EDCOM II classroom construction dashboard: DepEd’s 2023 classroom shortage by school, the SBP 2026 masterlist, SY 2024-25 enrollment and class shifts from the Basic Education Information System (BEIS), 2023 school facilities, and school coordinates from the National School Building Inventory (NSBI) for SY 2022-23. How the EDCOM Classroom Data Was Cleaned documents every table and cleaning rule.

A school’s shortage is DepEd’s 2023 figure for Kindergarten to Grade 10 plus senior high school, counted only where the school lacks classrooms. The shortage per 1,000 learners divides the shortage of schools with SY 2024-25 learners by those learners and multiplies by 1,000. Learners per classroom divide SY 2024-25 learners by 2023 instructional classrooms. A division’s coverage is its SBP 2026 classrooms divided by its 2023 shortage. Classrooms within a school’s shortage are counted up to the size of that shortage, and any beyond it are counted as beyond. Regions follow the PSGC; divisions are DepEd’s schools divisions as the 2023 data record them.

The analysis was done in Python with pandas, and the charts drawn with Matplotlib.

Limits

The sources span several years: the shortage and facilities are from 2023, enrollment and shifts from SY 2024-25, and the allocations from 2026, so a school’s figures may have changed since. The SBP list shows planned classrooms, not finished ones, and its PSIP III lines are still for bidding. The shortage is DepEd’s own estimate, and new, merged or renumbered schools may be missing or counted under a new ID. Coverage in a small division rests on a small shortage: Batanes’s 300.0% compares 21 classrooms with 7. Division totals of SBP classrooms leave out the three schools with no division in the data. These are descriptive figures: they show where the shortage and the 2026 classrooms are, not why.

Frequently asked questions

How big is the classroom shortage in Region II?

DepEd’s 2023 data put Region II’s classroom shortage at 2,501 classrooms, 1.5% of the national shortage of 165,443. That is 3.2 classrooms per 1,000 learners, against 7.4 nationally, and 35.6% of the region’s public schools have a shortage, against 54.2% nationally.

Which division in Region II has the biggest classroom shortage?

By count, Isabela, the provincial division, with 817 classrooms, 32.6% of the region’s shortage. By rate, Nueva Vizcaya and Santiago City, both short 4.8 classrooms per 1,000 learners. Every division in the region is below the national rate of 7.4.

How many classrooms will Region II get under the SBP 2026?

The SBP 2026 masterlist has 1,977 classrooms for Region II on 467 lines at 444 schools. Of these, 1,016 are funded under the GAA 2026 with PHP 3.15 billion and 961 are PSIP III classrooms still for bidding. Together they equal 79.0% of the region’s 2023 shortage, against 19.6% nationally. The list is a plan; it does not mean the classrooms are built.

If the SBP list nearly matches Region II’s shortage, why do schools still lack classrooms?

Because the list and the shortage fall on different schools. Of the 1,977 classrooms, 908 (45.9%) go to schools with no 2023 shortage, and only 564 fall within a receiving school’s own shortage. Counted school by school, the list meets 22.5% of the shortage and leaves 1,937 classrooms unmet.

Download the data and cite this post

The cleaned EDCOM II classroom data behind this series are free to download for personal study; to reuse them, email support@nash.com.ph for written permission first. How the EDCOM Classroom Data Was Cleaned explains every table and cleaning rule. The files are at data.nash.com.ph: start with the README, then the school table (Parquet, or CSV), the School Building Program lines (CSV), the city and municipality table (CSV), and every table for Stata and SPSS. Every regional figure in this report can be computed from the school table, filtered to Region II by deped_region.

Every file, with its rows, columns and checksum, is listed on the EDCOM II classroom data page. To cite the data: Llego, M. A. (2026). EDCOM II classroom construction dashboard data, cleaned, version 1.1. NASH Reviewer. https://nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data

To cite this post: Llego, M. A. (2026, October 28). Classroom shortage in Region II, 2023–2026: High coverage. NASH Reviewer Blog. https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-2-cagayan-valley

References

More in this series

Analysis and charts by Mark Anthony Llego for NASH Reviewer. Data: EDCOM II classroom construction dashboard and Department of Education data. NASH Reviewer is not affiliated with EDCOM II or DepEd. Charts may be reused only with written permission from support@nash.com.ph.