From volunteer burden to state obligation: Reframing Brigada Eskwela as test of gov't accountability
As classes approach each June, a familiar scene unfolds across the country. Teachers sweep classrooms, scrub walls, repair broken chairs, patch leaking roofs and repaint faded learning spaces. Many of them do so not because it is part of their job description, but because they know no one else will.
Some spend thousands of pesos from their own salaries. Others spend weekends coordinating donations, recruiting volunteers and preparing classrooms for learners. Long before the first lesson is taught, teachers have already invested time, labor and money to ensure that schools are ready to open.
For more than two decades, this annual ritual has been celebrated as Brigada Eskwela—a nationwide expression of bayanihan and community participation in education. Yet behind the inspiring images of volunteers painting classrooms and cleaning school grounds lies a more uncomfortable question: Why has the preparation and maintenance of public schools become dependent on volunteerism in the first place?
The answer reveals a deeper issue in Philippine education governance. What began as a community partnership has gradually become a mechanism through which the state shifts part of its responsibility for school maintenance to teachers and local communities.
This is not merely an administrative failure; it is a matter of social injustice. When the government relies on the unpaid labor and personal funds of public servants to fulfill basic obligations, it effectively transfers the cost of governance onto the most vulnerable, teachers, who are predominantly women, and the communities that can least afford it.
Brigada Eskwela was launched in 2003 under the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the National Schools Maintenance Week. Conceived as a voluntary initiative, it sought to bring together parents, teachers, students, local government units, civic organizations and private partners in preparing schools for the opening of classes.
Its roots can be traced to the Adopt-a-School Program of 1998, which encouraged private sector participation in supporting public education. The program was founded on a simple but powerful idea: education is everybody’s business.
The idea was appealing and deeply Filipino. Drawing from the tradition of bayanihan, Brigada Eskwela encouraged communities to contribute labor, expertise and resources to ensure that schools were ready to receive learners.
Over the years, however, the program expanded considerably. Participation became institutionalized across public schools, annual themes were introduced, partnerships widened and recognition programs such as the Brigada Eskwela Awards were established. What started as a week-long cleanup drive evolved into one of the DepEd’s most visible community engagement initiatives.
Yet this evolution also exposed a fundamental tension. Community participation can enrich schools, but it cannot substitute for government responsibility.
The more Brigada Eskwela became institutionalized, the more normal it became for schools to depend on donations, volunteer labor and teachers’ personal sacrifices to perform tasks that should have been funded through regular public expenditure.
Perhaps recognizing some of these unintended consequences, DepEd abolished the Best Brigada Eskwela Implementers competition in 2023. The awards system had long been criticized for encouraging schools to aggressively seek donations and showcase projects regardless of available resources.
What was intended as recognition often became a source of pressure. The decision to discontinue the competition was a tacit acknowledgment that the program’s implementation had drifted away from its original voluntary spirit.
Ironically, current DepEd policy explicitly recognizes that teachers should not shoulder the financial burden of school maintenance. Under the latest DepEd Memorandum for this year’s Brigada Eskwela, teachers are neither required nor expected to spend personal funds on repairs and improvements.
The guidelines also prohibit the collection of fees or contributions from parents for maintenance and repair activities. Financial donations from parents are not allowed; only voluntary donations in kind may be accepted. Teachers who render services during Brigada Eskwela are entitled to service credits equivalent to one day for every eight hours of service, up to a maximum of five days.
On paper, the policy is clear. School maintenance should not depend on teachers’ wallets.
Reality tells a different story.
A recent survey by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers found that 75% of teachers still spend personal funds on Brigada Eskwela and school-opening preparations. For an entry-level teacher earning around P26,000 in take-home pay, spending P5,000 means sacrificing nearly one-fifth of a month’s income.
Teachers report paying for paint, classroom repairs, damaged furniture and basic cleaning supplies, while many describe themselves as “solicitors general” or “professional beggars” in their search for donations. These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a larger problem: despite policies prohibiting personal spending, many schools remain dependent on teachers’ money, time and labor to function.
Defenders of Brigada Eskwela often invoke bayanihan. Community participation, they argue, strengthens schools and promotes shared responsibility for education. This is true—but only up to a point.
This gap between policy and practice is not an accident; it is the predictable outcome of chronic underfunding and the absence of accountability mechanisms for school maintenance.
Parents, communities and private partners undoubtedly have important roles to play in education. They can support literacy programs, learning activities, school events and student welfare initiatives.
But repairing roofs, repainting classrooms, replacing broken furniture and maintaining school facilities are fundamentally different matters. These are not voluntary enhancements. They are basic operational requirements of a functioning public school system.
A classroom with a leaking roof is not a community problem. It is a government problem.
A broken toilet is not a volunteer problem. It is a government problem.
An unsafe learning environment is not a problem that should be solved through charity.
The persistence of Brigada Eskwela as a maintenance strategy reflects a broader tendency in Philippine governance to celebrate resilience instead of addressing structural deficiencies. We praise teachers for sacrifice when we should be questioning why sacrifice is necessary. We celebrate donations when we should be asking why public funding remains inadequate. We applaud volunteerism while normalizing institutional shortcomings.
Other countries do not depend on annual volunteer drives to make classrooms usable. School maintenance is funded as part of the ordinary cost of providing public education. There is no reason the Philippines cannot aspire to the same standard.
Public schools are government institutions. Maintaining them should be treated as a core public obligation rather than an annual exercise in fundraising and goodwill. The constitutional right to quality basic education includes the right to a safe, clean, and functional school facility, delivered without conditional charity or teacher-funded repairs.
More than two decades after its launch, Brigada Eskwela remains one of the most recognizable education programs in the country. Its spirit of community participation deserves recognition and preservation.
But bayanihan should supplement government responsibility, not replace it. Social justice requires that the heaviest burdens fall on the strongest shoulders, those of the state, not on the most dedicated public servants and the poorest communities.
Teachers should not have to choose between following policy and spending their own money. They should not be expected to become fundraisers, repair workers, procurement officers and maintenance coordinators simply to ensure that students have decent classrooms.
The real measure of our commitment to education is not how much teachers are willing to sacrifice. It is how willing the government is to fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide safe, functional and adequately funded schools. Until that happens, Brigada Eskwela will remain less a celebration of bayanihan than a reminder of the burdens teachers continue to carry on behalf of the state.
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Arlyne C Marasigan ([email protected]) is a professor at the College of Advanced Studies and a fellow at EPRDO. Nikolee Marie A Serafico-Reyes ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences and a fellow at Educational Policy Research and Development Office (EPRDO). Jayson L de Vera ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the Faculty of Science, Technology, and Mathematics. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Philippine Normal University.
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