2025 national budget ‘unlawful’ – Teachers’ Dignity Coalition

President Ferdinand Marcos signs the 2025 national budget. —File photo from the Facebook page of the Presidential Communications Office

MANILA, Philippines —  The 2025 national budget did not meet its constitutional mandate by “unlawfully” including police, military, and local government academies in funding for the education sector, the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) said in a statement on Thursday.

“[T]he Marcos administration circumvented the Constitution by unlawfully including funding for military, police, and local government academies, as well as national defense and public safety colleges, with the education sector to meet the bare minimum constitutional requirement,” the TDC said.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the 2025 General Appropriations Act last Dec. 30, allocating P1.055 trillion to fund the Department of Education (DepEd), the Commission on Higher Education (Ched), the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) and state universities and colleges (SUCs).

READ: DepEd, DPWH get highest 2025 budget allocation

However, according to the TDC, the P1.055-trillion calculation also included funding for the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), the National Defense College of the Philippines (NDCP), the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA), the Philippine Public Safety College (PPSC), and the Local Government Academy (LGA).

The group compared the budget shared by the entire education sector to the P1.034 trillion allocated for the Department of Public Works and Highways.

Section 5(5) of Article XIV of the 1987 Constitution provides: “The State shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education and ensure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment.”

The teachers’ coalition mulled challenging the national budget in the Supreme Court.

“If the government is sincere in fulfilling the mandate of the State, then it should have given the largest chunk of its resources to institutions of basic education and universities… But it did not,” TDC Chairperson Benjo Basas maintained.

“[The government] lumped all the agencies together to achieve the minimum requirement. It’s a token,” Basas added.

The group ultimately slammed the 2025 budget for its allocations for cash assistance programs and “non-essential” infrastructure projects, claiming it fails to address classroom shortages, lack of learning materials and funding for digitization, and appeals to increase wages and benefits for teachers.

Basas said, “To genuinely uplift the lives of the Filipino people, we must address these gaps. Education must take center stage in our national agenda not just in words but in action. The current budget falls short of this ideal.”

READ: DepEd eyes more funds by partnering with DBM, DOF

On Wednesday, Jan. 1, DepEd announced it was partnering with the Department of Budget and Management and the Department of Finance to explore alternative sources of additional funding for its initiatives.