Public school teachers, students, and parent groups trooped to Congress on Wednesday, Sept. 14, to call for the doubling of the education budget for 2023.
“A significant increase to as much as two times the current education budget is central to enabling a 100 percent safe school reopening and recovering education from the learning crisis,” said Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines Chairperson Vladimer Quetua as the House Committee on Appropriations deliberated on the proposed 2023 budget for the Department of Education (DepEd).
For decades, Quetua said that Philippine spending on education only reaches up to two to four percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). “It is urgent that we finally adhere to the United Nation’s recommendation of spending at least 6 percent of GDP on education,” he added.
Quetua pointed out that with the projected GDP of P23.729 trillion in 2023, the government should spend about P1.424 trillion on education.
However, the proposed 2023 budget for DepEd is only P667.18 billion, or a 12 percent increase from last year’s P592.695 billion. “Such scant funding cannot fill in the many shortages in education, which is integral in education recovery,” he said.
Quetua said that there should be enough allocations for the construction of 91,000 new classrooms based on DepEd’s count of classroom shortages.
He noted that the government also needs to hire 147,000 more teachers to cut down the class size to 35 students. “This is crucial if we want to uplift the quality of education... this will only cost the government another P54 billion,” he added.
Quetua said that the country is suffering from shortages in armchairs and learning materials. “At least 1.5 million armchairs or desks should be procured to keep up with the increased enrolment,” he explained. “The old practice of sharing learning materials should also end, every student should have a complete set of textbooks and modules,” he added.
Moreover, Quetua said that the government should make good on its promise to free teachers of non-teaching duties.
“We need a school nurse, guidance counselor, registrar, librarian, utility personnel and security personnel in every school,” he said. “These duties should not fall upon the shoulders of our already overloaded teachers,” he added.
Quetua stressed that school maintenance and operating budgets should also be doubled “so that our classrooms can be retrofitted and health facilities can be installed.”
Likewise, he noted that teachers should also be “granted their overdue salary increase.”
Quetua said that the salary level of Teacher I should be upgraded to Salary Grade 15. “The government should also provide our teachers with laptops and other necessary teaching materials,” he added.
ACT noted that all of these can be possible if the government will double the budget for education. “We have long been languishing a deep education crisis,” Quetua said.
The group also challenged the Marcos administration to “let education make a great rebound by giving us the needed funds to do it.”