DepEd Buys 172,654 MacBook Neos for Public School Teachers
The Department of Education (DepEd) has bought 172,654 Apple MacBook Neo laptops for public school teachers and administrative staff. Each unit costs about P43,000, which puts the total near P7.4 billion.
Apple CEO John Ternus mentioned the deal on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call and called it the “biggest education deal ever for Mac.” DepEd confirmed the purchase in a statement on Tuesday, November 3.
Laptops for a quarter of teachers
The Philippines has nearly 900,000 public school teachers. Of the 172,654 units, 169,008 are for teachers and 3,646 are for administrative officers.
Under the DepEd Computerization Program, the department has awarded contracts for 231,725 laptops for teachers so far, enough for roughly one in four public school teachers. The MacBook Neo accounts for 169,008 of them. The other 62,717 are Windows-based.
What the P43,000 covers
The price includes the laptop, built-in productivity software, delivery and teacher training. It is about P6,900 below the P49,900 suggested retail price of the 256GB base model.
The laptops also come with a five-year warranty. The standard retail warranty is one year, and DepEd says five years is a first for its laptop purchases. The department says the contract went through competitive bidding.
GuroXL training
DepEd and Apple are building GuroXL, a training framework designed together to help teachers use the laptops in daily classroom teaching. Teachers also get access to the Apple Education Community, which has more than 70 lesson plans written by Filipino educators for local elementary and high school curriculum.
Teachers have relied on their own devices
Education Secretary Sonny Angara said the purchase is meant to address the equipment needs of teachers who have had to rely on personal or outdated devices.
President Marcos has pledged that every public school teacher will have a laptop before his term ends in 2028. DepEd had planned to buy more than 250,000 laptops for teaching staff under its 2026 budget.
Rollout runs through March
Deployment runs from November 2026 to March 2027. DepEd and Apple will hold cluster and mega-cluster launches, with unboxing sessions, across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. Apple’s announcement puts the reach at 16,400 K-12 public schools nationwide.
The MacBook Neo is Apple’s entry-level laptop. It launched in March 2026 with the A18 Pro chip, first used in the iPhone.
For 2027, DepEd is asking the Senate for P13 billion to buy over 267,000 laptops.
