Five years of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) Last Mile Schools Program (LMSP) has exposed the program’s corruption and rottenness. Furthermore, the LMSP has been used by the reactionary state for its counterinsurgency campaign to break the unity of Lumad schools in Mindanao.

The DepEd launched LMSP on July 18, 2019, supposedly to address the lack of facilities and resources in remote and far-flung areas, which it calls geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas, primarily indigenous communities. In the past five years, the program received funds of no less than ₱14.01 billion for building facilities and their accompanying requirements. The Marcos regime alloted ₱3 billion for it in 2025.

The Commission on Audit (COA) report published in December 2024 revealed the DepEd’s failure to complete infrastructure projects in LMSP schools funded as early as 2021, based on data gathered and audited in December 2023.

The COA found that 76 out of 98 facilities worth ₱1.4 billion under DepEd’s “Last Mile School Program (LMSP)” were not completed as of December 31, 2023. The COA was extremely alarmed that DepEd completed only 22, or 22.45% of the total, despite paying contractors ₱211.23 million in “mobilization fees.”

These infrastructure projects should have been completed within 150 days after permits were granted, and should not have exceeded May 31, 2022. These classrooms’ construction has reportedly been delayed for more than a year and a half, or 555 days.

Leonor Briones was then DepEd secretary from 2021 to 2022 under the Duterte administration, replaced by Vice President Sara Duterte from June 2022 to July 2024 under Marcos. Duterte boasted in 2023 that LMSP was among her priorities. Teachers demand her accountability for the gross mismanagement of the department’s funds and resources.

Counterinsurgency campaign

Teachers said the government has not only failed to complete buildings but has also trampled on students’ right to education, and on teachers’ right to decent teaching conditions. Apart from being plagued with corruption, LMSP also outrightly serves counterinsurgency purposes. The program’s launch in July 2019 coincided with the Duterte regime’s closure of Lumad schools in Mindanao accused of being operated by the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army.

A few days before formally launching LMSP, the DepEd ordered the temporary suspension of 55 Salugpungan schools in the Davao region, based on reports from Duterte’s military officials that these schools were teaching Lumad youth and students to rebel against the government. Prior to this, Rodrigo Duterte threatened in July 2017 to drop bombs on Lumad schools.

DepEd finalized the closure of the 55 Lumad schools in October 2019, using as pretext the schools’ failure to meet “government requirements.” In the following years, DepEd finally shut down all 216 Lumad schools in Mindanao.

To suppress Lumad organizations and communities who dared to organize and establish their own schools, DepEd replaced these with “last mile schools” that were either not built or mismanaged.

Teachers and advocates for the rights of national minorities have long called for the reopening of Lumad schools to secure the indigenous youth’s right to education.