The Department of Education (DepEd) was urged to rechannel the P150-million “confidential funds” it has requested to address the shortage in basic education resources, especially in public schools.

“At a time of a grave learning crisis, apportioning such amount for dubious activities purportedly to ward off the entry of supposed enemies of the State in the education sector is highly unjustified,” said Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Chairperson Vladimer Quetua in a statement issued Thursday, Sept. 15.

ACT Philippines questioned the allocation of P150 million in confidential funds in the 2023 proposed budget of DepEd.

For the group, the said amount will be of “better use” if utilized to fill in the many shortages in learning needs in the country.

Quetua noted that the P150 million can already procure 150,000 armchairs or about three million textbooks. The said amount, he added, can buy 4,286 laptops for teachers at P35,000 per unit.

“It can go a long way in providing for the lacking learning and teaching materials that hamper education recovery,” he added.

During the House Appropriations Committee hearing on DepEd’s 2023 budget on Sept. 14, Vice President and DepEd Secretary Sara Duterte said the proposed P150-million “confidential funds” were meant for initiatives that would protect students in schools from illegal activities --- among others.

However, Quetua pointed out that if the DepEd is concerned with the safety and security of students in schools, “it could have allotted the amount to hire security personnel in schools --- which right now are sorely lacking.”

Quetua said that DepEd could have allocated the amount to DepEd’s child protection program which has “zero budget” or it should have been earmarked for “above board items which benefits to education can be concretely seen.”

ACT also expressed concern that DepEd’s confidential funds will only be used to “fund red-tagging seminars” that attack legitimate unions or subject teachers, employees, and students to profiling and surveillance.

“If any, these confidential funds can only accomplish one thing: trample on our basic rights to privacy, to organization, and free expression,” Quetua said.

Quetua stressed that schools should be “safe spaces” and are not battlegrounds.” Given this, ACT called on the government to “address our concrete problems that hinder education recovery and bring its wars elsewhere.”