# Classroom Shortage in Tawi-Tawi: Highest Rate in the Country

Tawi-Tawi is short 24.2 classrooms per 1,000 learners, the highest rate of any province, and its 30 SBP 2026 classrooms cover 1.5% of its 2023 shortage.

This is the Markdown copy of [Classroom Shortage in Tawi-Tawi: Highest Rate in the Country](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-tawi-tawi), an article on the NASH Reviewer Blog by Mark Anthony Llego, published Oct 28, 2026, updated Nov 4, 2026. Topics: DepEd data, School resources. NASH Reviewer is an independent practice platform not affiliated with DepEd, BHROD, or NEAP.

Tawi-Tawi lacked 1,952 classrooms in 2023, according to DepEd's classroom shortage data as published in the EDCOM II classroom construction dashboard. For its size, no province has a larger gap: it is short 24.2 classrooms for every 1,000 learners enrolled in SY 2024-25, 3.3 times the national rate of 7.4 and the highest of the 115 provinces and highly urbanized cities with 20,000 learners or more. Of its 262 schools in the shortage data, 250 (95.4%) lack classrooms.

The School Building Program (SBP) 2026 lists 30 classrooms for the province, on eight lines at eight schools, enough for 1.5% of its shortage. Six of its 11 municipalities have none. Only 8 of the 250 schools with a shortage receive any classroom, and those eight look much like the schools left off: both groups have a median shortage of 7.0 classrooms, so the list shows no sign of favoring the larger shortages.

[BARMM's report](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-barmm) gives Tawi-Tawi's division and province figures. The figures below, from the cleaned school-level data behind the dashboard, go school by school through its island municipalities, from Mapun and the Turtle Islands in the northwest to Sibutu and Sitangkai in the southwest. Every file is listed on the [EDCOM II classroom data page](https://nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data).

## Key findings

- Tawi-Tawi is short 24.2 classrooms per 1,000 learners, 3.3 times the national 7.4 and the highest rate of any province or highly urbanized city, with a 2023 shortage of 1,952 classrooms.
- 250 of its 262 schools (95.4%) have a shortage, and half of the shortage is spread over 59 schools (22.5%), against 4.7% of schools nationally.
- The SBP 2026 list has 30 classrooms for Tawi-Tawi, 1.5% of its shortage, and six of its 11 municipalities, among them Panglima Sugala (short 287) and Sitangkai (200), have none.
- Only 8 of the 250 schools with a shortage (3.2%) receive any classroom, and listed and unlisted schools have the same median shortage, 7.0 classrooms (Mann–Whitney p = 0.840).
- Shifts are rare, at three schools (1.1%), but the median elementary school has 41.4 learners per classroom and 80 schools have more than 50.
- No Tawi-Tawi school carries the Last Mile School flag in DepEd's 2023 data, and Turtle Islands, short 34 classrooms, is one of the fifth-class municipalities EDCOM II found with no 2026 allocation.

## Tawi-Tawi against BARMM and the country

The table sets Tawi-Tawi beside its region and the country, with the same definition in each row. BARMM here leaves out Sulu, whose schools division moved to DepEd Region IX on 20 October 2026 ([DepEd](https://www.deped.gov.ph/2026/10/20/pbbm-angara-inilunsad-ang-yakap-health-caravan-suporta-sa-mga-paaralan-sa-sulu-tiniyak/); [Daily Tribune](https://tribune.net.ph/2026/10/20/sulu-schools-division-formally-shifts-to-deped-region-ix)).

| Indicator                                                   |   Tawi-Tawi |   BARMM |   Philippines |
|:------------------------------------------------------------|------------:|--------:|--------------:|
| Schools in the 2023 shortage data                           |         262 |   2,150 |        47,659 |
| Schools with a classroom shortage                           |       95.4% |   87.0% |         54.2% |
| Classroom shortage (2023)                                   |       1,952 |  11,064 |       165,443 |
| Shortage per 1,000 learners                                 |        24.2 |    14.3 |           7.4 |
| Median shortage of schools with a shortage                  |         7.0 |     5.0 |           3.0 |
| SBP 2026 classrooms                                         |          30 |     197 |        32,419 |
| SBP 2026 classrooms as a share of the shortage              |        1.5% |    1.8% |         19.6% |
| SBP 2026 classrooms within the receiving school's shortage  |       73.3% |   73.4% |         53.0% |
| Schools with a shortage that get any SBP 2026 classroom     |        3.2% |    2.3% |         13.3% |
| Schools with two or more shifts (SY 2024-25)                |        1.1% |    1.1% |          4.3% |
| Median learners per classroom, elementary                   |        41.4 |    44.9 |          24.9 |
| Schools using makeshift rooms (2023)                        |       26.0% |   42.3% |         29.0% |
| Last Mile Schools                                           |        0.0% |    0.9% |         18.5% |

Tawi-Tawi sits at the far end of a region that is already far from the country. Its shortage per learner, 24.2, is well above BARMM's 14.3, and nearly every school lacks classrooms. On the 2026 list it looks like the rest of BARMM: classrooms for 1.5% of the shortage, against 19.6% nationally, and few schools reached. It differs from the region on makeshift rooms, which 26.0% of its schools use against 42.3% in BARMM.

The same rate puts Tawi-Tawi at the top of every national ranking by rate. The Tawi-Tawi schools division, which has the same 262 schools, has the highest rate of any division in the country ([Philippine Classroom Shortage 2023: Where the Gap Is](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-philippines-2023)). Tawi-Tawi, Lone District has the highest rate of the 237 congressional districts with 20,000 learners or more and the ninth largest shortage, with coverage of 1.5% ([Classroom Shortage by Congressional District, 2023–2026](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-by-congressional-district)). Bongao, at 20.7, has the highest rate of the country's cities and municipalities with 20,000 learners or more ([the 20 cities and municipalities with the largest shortages](https://nash.com.ph/blog/cities-municipalities-largest-classroom-shortage)). By count, Tawi-Tawi ranks 24th of the 118 provinces and highly urbanized cities.

Nearly all of the shortage is in Kindergarten to Grade 10, 1,925 classrooms; senior high school accounts for 27 (1.4%). Only eight schools report more Kindergarten to Grade 10 classrooms than they need, 15 in all.

## Classroom shortage by municipality in Tawi-Tawi

Tawi-Tawi's 11 municipalities are spread over island groups between the Sulu Sea and the Celebes Sea. The chart sets each one's 2023 shortage beside its SBP 2026 classrooms.

![Paired horizontal bars of the 2023 classroom shortage and SBP 2026 classrooms in Tawi-Tawi's 11 municipalities. Bongao is short 544 classrooms and has 8 on the list, Panglima Sugala 287 and none, Sitangkai 200 and none, Mapun 173 and 6, Languyan 154 and 4, and South Ubian 102 and 10; Sapa-Sapa, Tandubas, Sibutu and Turtle Islands also have none.](https://nash.com.ph/blog/_astro/classroom-shortage-tawi-tawi-by-municipality.Bk8QSBc9_1yJHAS.webp)

*Figure 1. 2023 classroom shortage and SBP 2026 classrooms by municipality, Tawi-Tawi. Chart: © 2026 Mark Anthony Llego, NASH Reviewer. [Download the full-resolution chart (PNG)](https://nash.com.ph/blog/charts/deped-data/classroom-shortage-tawi-tawi-by-municipality.png).*

The orange bars barely show. Bongao, the capital, is short 544 classrooms, 27.9% of the province's shortage, and has eight on the list. Panglima Sugala, short 287, has none; of the country's cities and municipalities with no SBP 2026 classroom, only Datu Odin Sinsuat and South Upi have larger shortages ([Do 2026 Classrooms Go Where the Shortage Is?](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-allocation-vs-shortage-2026)). Sitangkai, short 200, also has none. South Ubian has the highest coverage, 9.8%, and no municipality is listed for more than its shortage.

| Municipality    |   Schools |   Learners (SY 2024-25) |   Classroom shortage (2023) |   Shortage per 1,000 learners |   Schools with a shortage |   Schools on shifts |   SBP 2026 classrooms |   Coverage |
|:----------------|----------:|------------------------:|----------------------------:|------------------------------:|--------------------------:|--------------------:|----------------------:|-----------:|
| Bongao          |        62 |                  26,276 |                         544 |                          20.7 |                     98.4% |                   1 |                     8 |       1.5% |
| Panglima Sugala |        34 |                   9,325 |                         287 |                          30.8 |                    100.0% |                   0 |                     0 |       0.0% |
| Sitangkai       |        14 |                   7,683 |                         200 |                          26.0 |                    100.0% |                   1 |                     0 |       0.0% |
| Mapun           |        19 |                   5,305 |                         173 |                          32.6 |                     89.5% |                   0 |                     6 |       3.5% |
| Languyan        |        33 |                   5,636 |                         154 |                          27.3 |                     93.9% |                   0 |                     4 |       2.6% |
| Sapa-Sapa       |        26 |                   5,733 |                         139 |                          24.2 |                     96.2% |                   0 |                     0 |       0.0% |
| Simunul         |        27 |                   5,536 |                         131 |                          23.6 |                     92.6% |                   1 |                     2 |       1.5% |
| Tandubas        |        17 |                   4,682 |                         106 |                          22.6 |                     94.1% |                   0 |                     0 |       0.0% |
| South Ubian     |        13 |                   3,852 |                         102 |                          26.5 |                    100.0% |                   0 |                    10 |       9.8% |
| Sibutu          |        13 |                   4,928 |                          83 |                          16.8 |                     76.9% |                   0 |                     0 |       0.0% |
| Turtle Islands  |         4 |                   1,671 |                          34 |                          20.3 |                    100.0% |                   0 |                     0 |       0.0% |

Every municipality is far above the national rate per learner. Mapun is highest at 32.6 per 1,000 learners and Panglima Sugala next at 30.8; even Sibutu, the lowest at 16.8, is above BARMM's 14.3. Every school in Panglima Sugala, Sitangkai, South Ubian and Turtle Islands has a shortage. Only three schools in the province, one each in Bongao, Sitangkai and Simunul, hold classes in shifts.

Turtle Islands, the smallest, has four schools with 1,671 learners, short 34 classrooms between them, and no SBP 2026 classroom. EDCOM II's 20 October 2026 news release reported that of the country's 66 fifth-class municipalities, 30 received no allocation despite a combined shortage of 356 classrooms, and named Turtle Islands among them (EDCOM II, 2026, October 20). [Classroom Allocation by LGU Income Class, 2026](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-allocation-lgu-income-class) looks at allocation by income class across the country.

## Schools with the largest classroom shortages in Tawi-Tawi

The 15 schools with the largest shortages are short 402 classrooms between them, 20.6% of the province's shortage. Seven are in Bongao, two are on the SBP 2026 list, and none holds classes in shifts.

|   School ID | School                               | Municipality    | Barangay            |   Learners (SY 2024-25) | Learners per classroom   |   Classroom shortage (2023) |   SBP 2026 classrooms | Two or more shifts   |
|------------:|:-------------------------------------|:----------------|:--------------------|------------------------:|:-------------------------|----------------------------:|----------------------:|:---------------------|
|      134767 | Lupa Pula Pilot Elem. School         | Mapun           | Lupa Pula           |                   1,222 | 50.9                     |                          35 |                     0 | No                   |
|      305053 | Batu-Batu NHS                        | Panglima Sugala | Batu-batu           |                   1,555 | 53.6                     |                          34 |                     0 | No                   |
|      501266 | Tabawan Integrated School            | South Ubian     | Pampang             |                   1,117 | 74.5                     |                          34 |                     0 | No                   |
|      134725 | Tubig Tanah Pilot Elementary School  | Bongao          | Tubig Tanah         |                   1,004 | 59.1                     |                          32 |                     0 | No                   |
|      134902 | Datu Halun Laboratory School         | Bongao          | Bongao Poblacion    |                   1,140 | 54.3                     |                          30 |                     0 | No                   |
|      305065 | Tawi-Tawi School of Fisheries        | Bongao          | Bongao Poblacion    |                   2,162 | 83.2                     |                          28 |                     0 | No                   |
|      134831 | Sipangkot ES                         | Sitangkai       | Sipangkot           |                   1,046 | 69.7                     |                          27 |                     0 | No                   |
|      134844 | Laud Sitangkai ES                    | Sitangkai       | Datu Baguinda Putih |                     863 | 172.6                    |                          27 |                     0 | No                   |
|      134845 | Laud Sitangkai Annex ES              | Sitangkai       | Imam Sapie          |                     722 | 40.1                     |                          27 |                     0 | No                   |
|      134903 | Salamat ES                           | Bongao          | Bongao Poblacion    |                     810 | 47.6                     |                          25 |                     0 | No                   |
|      305066 | Tawi Tawi SAT                        | Bongao          | Pag-asa             |                   3,093 | 41.8                     |                          24 |                     0 | No                   |
|      345750 | Mapun National High School           | Mapun           | Erok-erok           |                     859 | Not given                |                          20 |                     3 | No                   |
|      134722 | Sama Kasulutan ES                    | Bongao          | Simandagit          |                     743 | 92.9                     |                          20 |                     0 | No                   |
|      134901 | Datu Halun Pilot ES                  | Bongao          | Bongao Poblacion    |                     737 | 49.1                     |                          20 |                     0 | No                   |
|      134762 | Paaralang Elementarya ng Umus Mataha | Mapun           | Umus Mataha         |                     550 | 45.8                     |                          19 |                     3 | No                   |

Lupa Pula Pilot Elem. School in Mapun has the largest shortage in the province, 35 classrooms for 1,222 learners, and Batu-Batu NHS in Panglima Sugala and Tabawan Integrated School in South Ubian follow at 34. These are small figures beside the country's largest school shortage, 319 classrooms, and the schools are small too: the largest in this table enrolls 3,093 learners. Only Mapun National High School and Paaralang Elementarya ng Umus Mataha, both in Mapun, are on the list, with three classrooms each. Two records are worth checking: Laud Sitangkai ES's 172.6 learners per classroom, and Mapun National High School, which has no figure because no instructional classroom count is recorded for it in the 2023 data.

The shortage is spread unusually evenly. The 26 schools with the largest shortages, the top 10% of the province's schools, hold 30.0% of it, against 66.0% nationally, and half of it is spread over 59 schools (22.5%), against 4.7% of schools nationally. Sixty schools are short by 10 or more classrooms, and among schools with a shortage the median is 7.0, against 3.0 in the country. In Tawi-Tawi the shortage is not a few overcrowded schools; it is nearly every school, several rooms each.

## Where Tawi-Tawi's SBP 2026 classrooms go

The map places every Tawi-Tawi school with usable coordinates, sized by its 2023 shortage and colored by whether it is on the SBP 2026 list.

![Map of 199 of Tawi-Tawi's 264 public schools, each dot sized by its 2023 classroom shortage, across islands from Mapun in the far northwest to Sibutu and Sitangkai in the southwest. Nearly every dot is blue, a school with a shortage and no SBP 2026 classroom; a handful of orange dots, schools on the list, appear in Mapun, around Bongao and further east, and gray dots for schools with no shortage are almost absent.](https://nash.com.ph/blog/_astro/classroom-shortage-tawi-tawi-map.B6HxPLag_Z18HrsJ.webp)

*Figure 2. Every public school in Tawi-Tawi with usable coordinates, sized by its 2023 classroom shortage: orange if on the SBP 2026 list, blue if short with no SBP 2026 classroom, gray if neither. Chart: © 2026 Mark Anthony Llego, NASH Reviewer. [Download the full-resolution chart (PNG)](https://nash.com.ph/blog/charts/deped-data/classroom-shortage-tawi-tawi-map.png).*

The map is almost entirely blue. Schools with a shortage line the coasts of the main island group around Bongao and Tawi-Tawi Island, the chain of Sibutu and Sitangkai to the southwest, and Mapun far to the northwest. The few orange dots are scattered among them. The map shows 199 of the 264 schools; the others have no coordinates, or coordinates flagged as far from their barangay or lying outside the province, and are left off.

The SBP 2026 masterlist has eight lines for Tawi-Tawi, 30 classrooms at eight schools, 0.1% of the national list for a province with 1.2% of the national shortage. All are funded under the General Appropriations Act (GAA) 2026, with PHP 0.13 billion.

| Implementation modality   |   Lines |   Schools |   Classrooms |   Share of the place's SBP classrooms |           Budget |
|:--------------------------|--------:|----------:|-------------:|--------------------------------------:|-----------------:|
| DPWH                      |       5 |         5 |           18 |                                 60.0% | PHP 0.06 billion |
| LGU - PROVINCE            |       3 |         3 |           12 |                                 40.0% | PHP 0.07 billion |

Two implementers reach Tawi-Tawi: the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), with 18 classrooms, and the provincial government, with 12. The province has no PSIP III line, no repeated line, and no DepEd-implemented line, so no Learning Continuity Space or Last Mile School building. With only eight schools on the list, the table of schools with the most SBP 2026 classrooms holds all of them:

| School                               | Municipality   |   Classroom shortage (2023) |   SBP 2026 classrooms | Modality       |
|:-------------------------------------|:---------------|----------------------------:|----------------------:|:---------------|
| Lawm Tabawan CES                     | South Ubian    |                           2 |                    10 | DPWH           |
| Lamion Walking (Annex) PS            | Bongao         |                           9 |                     6 | LGU - PROVINCE |
| Mapun National High School           | Mapun          |                          20 |                     3 | LGU - PROVINCE |
| Paaralang Elementarya ng Umus Mataha | Mapun          |                          19 |                     3 | LGU - PROVINCE |
| Lamion Walking (Main) ES             | Bongao         |                          14 |                     2 | DPWH           |
| Parang Pantay PS                     | Languyan       |                           2 |                     2 | DPWH           |
| Laud Elementary School               | Simunul        |                           2 |                     2 | DPWH           |
| Sidalling PS                         | Languyan       |                           5 |                     2 | DPWH           |

School by school, 22 of the 30 classrooms (73.3%) fall within the receiving school's own 2023 shortage. The other eight are all at Lawm Tabawan CES in South Ubian, short 2 and listed for 10; no classroom goes to a school without a shortage. Counted this way, the list meets 1.1% of the province's shortage and leaves 1,930 classrooms unmet. [Do 2026 Classrooms Go Where the Shortage Is?](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-allocation-vs-shortage-2026) explains the method.

Why so few classrooms are listed for Tawi-Tawi, these data do not say. [BARMM's report](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-barmm) sets out what EDCOM II has reported about national programs in the region since the Bangsamoro Organic Law. [Education in the Bangsamoro](https://nash.com.ph/blog/bangsamoro-education-barmm-edcom-ii) covers EDCOM II's wider findings on how education in the region is governed and financed.

## Does the 2026 list favor Tawi-Tawi's largest shortages?

With eight schools on the list, the question is whether those eight are the ones that lack the most. Two checks ask. The first groups schools by the size of their 2023 shortage and gives the share in each group with any SBP 2026 classroom.

| 2023 classroom shortage   |   Schools |   Schools with SBP 2026 classrooms | Share (95% interval)   |
|:--------------------------|----------:|-----------------------------------:|:-----------------------|
| None                      |        12 |                                  0 | 0.0% (0.0% to 24.2%)   |
| 1 to 5                    |       100 |                                  4 | 4.0% (1.6% to 9.8%)    |
| Over 5 to 20              |       139 |                                  4 | 2.9% (1.1% to 7.2%)    |
| Over 20                   |        11 |                                  0 | 0.0% (0.0% to 25.9%)   |

The share does not rise with the shortage. Four of the 100 schools short 1 to 5 classrooms are on the list, four of the 139 short over 5 to 20, and none of the 11 short more than 20. Each share comes with a 95% interval, the range of shares that fit the counts. These are Wilson score intervals (Wilson, 1927), which stay accurate for small groups and for shares at or near zero, where the familiar plus-or-minus formula would give an interval of zero width. Here the intervals matter: none of 11 schools is 0.0%, but with so few schools anything up to 25.9% fits the count. All four intervals overlap, so the bands cannot be told apart.

The second check uses every school's exact shortage. Take the 250 schools with a shortage and split them in two: the 8 on the list and the 242 left off. Both groups have a median shortage of 7.0 classrooms. The Mann–Whitney test (Mann & Whitney, 1947) asks whether the two groups' shortages differ more than chance would give: it ranks all 250 schools from the smallest shortage to the largest and compares the two groups' ranks, so a few large shortages cannot decide the result. The p-value, 0.840, is the chance of a gap at least this large if listing ignored the shortage; a value this high means the data give no sign of a gap.

The rank-biserial correlation measures the size of any lean (Kerby, 2014). Pair every listed school with every unlisted one: r is the share of pairs in which the listed school has the larger shortage minus the share in which it has the smaller. It runs from −1 to 1, with 0 meaning no lean, and Tawi-Tawi's is 0.04. With only eight schools on the list, the test could detect only a strong lean, so the result says the list does not visibly favor the larger shortages, not that it was drawn at random. Neither check says why a school was or was not listed.

## Crowding, buildings and the Last Mile flag in Tawi-Tawi

Tawi-Tawi's schools crowd learners into the rooms they have rather than splitting them into shifts. In SY 2024-25, only 3 of the 263 schools in the enrollment data (1.1%) held classes in two or more shifts, with 1.5% of the learners. The median school has 41.4 learners per classroom in elementary, 43.9 in junior high and 46.6 in senior high, against 24.9, 32.1 and 30.6 nationally. In 80 schools there are more than 50 learners per classroom, and they hold 41.0% of the learners counted; bringing each down to 50 would take at least 202 classrooms. [Class Shifts and Crowded Classrooms in DepEd Schools](https://nash.com.ph/blog/class-shifting-crowded-classrooms) explains the measure.

The 2023 facilities data show 68 schools (26.0%) using makeshift rooms, against 42.3% in BARMM and 29.0% nationally, and 53 schools reporting a building for condemnation or demolition, 86 buildings in all.

Last Mile Schools are schools in geographically isolated, disadvantaged and conflict-affected areas and hardship posts (EDCOM II, 2026). The flag in these data comes with DepEd's 2023 shortage table, and it marks none of Tawi-Tawi's schools, against 20 schools (0.9%) in BARMM and 8,820 (18.5%) nationally. This means that the Last Mile comparisons in [Last Mile Schools: Classroom Need and 2026 Allocation](https://nash.com.ph/blog/last-mile-schools-classroom-shortage) cannot be made within Tawi-Tawi, and that no Tawi-Tawi school counts toward the national Last Mile School figures.

## What this means for school heads in Tawi-Tawi

In Tawi-Tawi nearly every school has a shortage of several rooms, so a school's case stands out by the detail of its record.

- **Find your school in the data.** Look up your school ID in the school table for your 2023 shortage, learners per classroom and any SBP 2026 line; the [EDCOM II classroom data page](https://nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data) links every file.
- **Lead with crowding and makeshift rooms.** With 80 schools above 50 learners per classroom and 26.0% using makeshift rooms, cite your own learners per classroom and the classes that meet in makeshift rooms beside your shortage in the [school improvement plan](https://nash.com.ph/blog/deped-school-improvement-plan).
- **Check your school's record.** Mapun National High School has no instructional classroom count in the 2023 data, and some ratios look too high. If your rooms, enrollment, coordinates or ID look wrong, raise it with your MBHTE schools division office before the data are used for planning.
- **Know who builds.** Tawi-Tawi's 2026 classrooms come only through DPWH and provincial government lines, so the provincial government and the DPWH district engineering office are partners in any request, with the municipality and the division.
- **Bring the numbers to the municipality.** Six of the 11 municipalities have no 2026 classroom. A municipal table of each school's shortage, learners per classroom and makeshift rooms is a concrete request for the local school board.

## 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](https://nash.com.ph/blog/edcom-classroom-data-cleaned) documents every table and cleaning rule. The analysis was done in Python with pandas, SciPy and geopandas.

- **The place.** Tawi-Tawi is the PSGC province, the same 262 schools as the Tawi-Tawi schools division in the 2023 shortage table; its 264 schools in all, including those not in that table, give its SBP classrooms. Municipalities follow the PSGC.
- **Rates, ranks and coverage.** A school's shortage is DepEd's 2023 figure for Kindergarten to Grade 10 plus senior high school. The shortage per 1,000 learners divides the shortage of schools with SY 2024-25 learners by those learners and multiplies by 1,000. Ranks compare the 118 provinces and highly urbanized cities: by shortage, all of them; by rate, the 115 with 20,000 learners or more. Coverage is SBP 2026 classrooms divided by the 2023 shortage.
- **School by school.** At each school, classrooms within its shortage are the smaller of its SBP classrooms and its shortage, and classrooms beyond it are any SBP classrooms over the shortage. The unmet shortage is the shortage minus the classrooms within it, summed over schools.
- **Mann–Whitney comparison.** Among schools with a 2023 shortage, the shortages of the schools on the list and off it are compared with the two-sided Mann–Whitney U test (SciPy). The rank-biserial correlation is r = 2U ÷ (n₁ × n₂) − 1, where U is the test statistic for the listed schools and n₁ and n₂ are the two group sizes.
- **Bands and intervals.** Schools are grouped by their 2023 shortage (none, 1 to 5, over 5 to 20, over 20 classrooms), and each share has a 95% Wilson score interval.
- **Crowding.** Learners per classroom divide SY 2024-25 learners by 2023 instructional classrooms, so a school with no instructional classroom count recorded has no figure. For each school above 50, the classrooms needed are the rooms that would bring it to 50 learners per classroom, minus the rooms it has.
- **The map.** Schools are placed at their NSBI coordinates. Schools without coordinates, with coordinates more than 10 km from their barangay's center, or with coordinates outside the province's frame are left off, which is why 199 of the 264 schools appear.

## Limits

The sources span several years: the shortage and facilities are from 2023, enrollment and shifts from SY 2024-25, coordinates from SY 2022-23 and the allocations from 2026, so a school's figures may have changed since. The SBP list shows planned classrooms, not finished ones. The shortage is DepEd's own estimate, and new, merged or renumbered schools may be missing or counted under a new ID; some Tawi-Tawi schools have no instructional classroom count recorded, which leaves their crowding unmeasured, and many have no usable coordinates.

With eight schools on the list, the Mann–Whitney test and the Wilson intervals can detect only a large difference, and both treat the province's schools as if they were drawn by chance, though they are every school in it. The Last Mile flag marks no Tawi-Tawi school, so nothing here compares Last Mile Schools with others. 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 Tawi-Tawi?

DepEd's 2023 data put Tawi-Tawi's classroom shortage at 1,952 classrooms. That is 24.2 classrooms per 1,000 learners, 3.3 times the national 7.4 and the highest rate of any province or highly urbanized city, and 95.4% of the province's public schools have a shortage.

### Which municipality in Tawi-Tawi has the biggest classroom shortage?

Bongao, the capital, short 544 classrooms, 27.9% of the province's shortage, with eight on the SBP 2026 list. By rate, Mapun is highest at 32.6 classrooms per 1,000 learners, followed by Panglima Sugala at 30.8; Panglima Sugala, short 287, has no SBP 2026 classroom.

### How many SBP 2026 classrooms will Tawi-Tawi get?

The SBP 2026 masterlist has 30 classrooms for Tawi-Tawi on eight lines at eight schools, funded under the GAA 2026 with PHP 0.13 billion, through DPWH and the provincial government. They equal 1.5% of the 2023 shortage, against 19.6% nationally. The list is a plan; it does not mean the classrooms are built.

### Does Turtle Islands get any SBP 2026 classrooms?

No. Turtle Islands' four schools, with 1,671 learners, were short 34 classrooms in 2023, and none of them is on the SBP 2026 list. EDCOM II's 20 October 2026 news release named Turtle Islands among the fifth-class municipalities that received no allocation despite a shortage.

## 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](mailto:support@nash.com.ph) for written permission first. [How the EDCOM Classroom Data Was Cleaned](https://nash.com.ph/blog/edcom-classroom-data-cleaned) explains every table and cleaning rule. The files are at data.nash.com.ph: start with the [README](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data/v1.1/README.md), then the [school table](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data/v1.1/schools.parquet) (Parquet, or [CSV](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data/v1.1/schools.csv.gz)), the [School Building Program lines](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data/v1.1/sbp_projects.csv.gz) (CSV), the [city and municipality table](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data/v1.1/lgu_summary.csv.gz) (CSV), and every table for [Stata](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data/v1.1/classroom_tables_stata.zip) and [SPSS](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data/v1.1/classroom_tables_spss.zip). Every figure in this post can be computed from the school table, filtered to Tawi-Tawi by `province`, with the School Building Program lines matched to it by `school_id`.

Every file, with its rows, columns and checksum, is listed on the [EDCOM II classroom data page](https://nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data). 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 Tawi-Tawi: Highest rate in the country*. NASH Reviewer Blog. https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-tawi-tawi

## References

- Kerby, D. S. (2014). The simple difference formula: An approach to teaching nonparametric correlation. *Comprehensive Psychology, 3*.
- Llego, M. A. (2026). *EDCOM II classroom construction dashboard data, cleaned, version 1.1* [Data set]. NASH Reviewer. https://nash.com.ph/edcom-classroom-data
- Mann, H. B., & Whitney, D. R. (1947). On a test of whether one of two random variables is stochastically larger than the other. *Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 18*(1), 50–60.
- Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II). (2026). *National Education Plan 2026–2035* (Year Three report).
- Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II). (2026, October 20). *Put classrooms where they're needed most, EDCOM 2 tells DepEd* [News release]. https://edcom2.gov.ph/put-classrooms-where-theyre-needed-most-edcom-2-tells-deped/
- Wilson, E. B. (1927). Probable inference, the law of succession, and statistical inference. *Journal of the American Statistical Association, 22*(158), 209–212.

## More in this series

- [How the EDCOM Classroom Data Was Cleaned](https://nash.com.ph/blog/edcom-classroom-data-cleaned)
- [Philippine Classroom Shortage 2023: Where the Gap Is](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-philippines-2023)
- [DepEd School Building Program 2026 in Numbers](https://nash.com.ph/blog/deped-school-building-program-2026)
- [Do 2026 Classrooms Go Where the Shortage Is?](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-allocation-vs-shortage-2026)
- [Classroom Allocation by LGU Income Class, 2026](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-allocation-lgu-income-class)
- [Class Shifts and Crowded Classrooms in DepEd Schools](https://nash.com.ph/blog/class-shifting-crowded-classrooms)
- [Last Mile Schools: Classroom Need and 2026 Allocation](https://nash.com.ph/blog/last-mile-schools-classroom-shortage)
- Regional reports: [NCR](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-ncr), [CAR](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-car), [Region I](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-1-ilocos), [Region II](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-2-cagayan-valley), [Region III](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-3-central-luzon), [Region IV-A](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-4a-calabarzon), [MIMAROPA](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-mimaropa), [Region V](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-5-bicol), [Region VI](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-6-western-visayas), [NIR](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-negros-island-region), [Region VII](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-7-central-visayas), [Region VIII](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-8-eastern-visayas), [Region IX](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-9-zamboanga-peninsula), [Region X](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-10-northern-mindanao), [Region XI](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-11-davao), [Region XII](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-12-soccsksargen), [Caraga](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-region-13-caraga), [BARMM](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-barmm)
- Rankings and deep dives: [Congressional districts](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-by-congressional-district), [Top 20 cities and municipalities](https://nash.com.ph/blog/cities-municipalities-largest-classroom-shortage), [Rizal](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-rizal), [Quezon City](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-quezon-city), [City of Manila](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-manila), [Tawi-Tawi](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-tawi-tawi), [Cavite](https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-cavite), [Cost of a classroom](https://nash.com.ph/blog/cost-to-build-classroom-philippines)
- Explainers: [PSIP III](https://nash.com.ph/blog/psip-iii-classrooms-explained), [Senior high shortage](https://nash.com.ph/blog/senior-high-school-classroom-shortage), [Junior high shortage](https://nash.com.ph/blog/junior-high-school-classroom-shortage), [Excess classrooms](https://nash.com.ph/blog/schools-with-more-classrooms-than-needed), [Learning Continuity Spaces](https://nash.com.ph/blog/learning-continuity-spaces-sbp-2026), [How learners reach school](https://nash.com.ph/blog/how-learners-reach-public-high-schools)
- For teachers and school heads: [Action research and thesis topics](https://nash.com.ph/blog/action-research-topics-classroom-shortage)
- Related: [CRLA Results SY 2025-26 in BARMM: Where Need Is Greatest](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-barmm), [DepEd Classroom and School Building Data, SY 2023-2024](https://nash.com.ph/blog/deped-classroom-school-building-data-sy-2023-2024), [DepEd School Improvement Plan (SIP): Steps, AIP and SRC](https://nash.com.ph/blog/deped-school-improvement-plan), [How to Read DepEd Data: A Guide for Aspiring School Heads](https://nash.com.ph/blog/how-to-read-deped-data)

*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.*

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© 2026 Mark Anthony Llego, NASH Reviewer. All rights reserved. You may quote up to 100 words from this article with the author's name, its title and a link. In research, cite it as: Llego, M. A. (2026, October 28). *Classroom Shortage in Tawi-Tawi: Highest Rate in the Country*. NASH Reviewer. https://nash.com.ph/blog/classroom-shortage-tawi-tawi. Any other reuse of the article, its charts or its data needs written permission: email support@nash.com.ph. Terms of Service: https://nash.com.ph/terms#website-content-and-data