Palace: Unfair to exclude non-DepEd institutions in education budget

Inquirer photo/Niño Jesus Orbeta

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Tuesday stood firm on its position that the education sector received the highest allocation in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) after critics accused it of bloating the education budget by including funding for police and military schools.

At P1.05 trillion, the education sector received the “lion’s share” of the 2025 national budget, it stressed.

“The language of the Constitution is not that specific in mentioning education. If before, the treatment was that the budget of education was only that which was allocated to DepEd (Department of Education)—that was the wisdom at that time,” Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin said in a Palace press briefing.

READ: Budget allocations worry private sector, teachers

“But [since] then, so many things have happened that the education responsibility has been shifted to other government agencies,” he told reporters.

“So, is it fair for everyone to claim we cannot include some items under the education sector only because they are under the Philippine National Police or the Armed Forces of the Philippines? That’s not okay,” Bersamin said.

Critics have accused the government of trying to get around the constitutional requirement of giving education the highest share of the national budget. Lawmakers, they claimed, bloated funding for the sector in the 2025 GAA by including the budget for institutions like the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA), and Local Government Academy (LGA) which are under noneducation agencies.

Funding for the Philippine Public Safety College (PPSC), National Defense College of the Philippines (NDCP), Philippine Science High School (PSHS) System, and Science Education Institute (SEI) were also lumped under the education sector.

The PMA and NDCP are under the Department of National Defense (DND), while the PNPA, PPSC, and LGA are under the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG). The PSHS and SEI are under the Department of Science and Technology.

Under Article XIV, Section 5 of the Constitution, the government must “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.”

According to Bersamin, the President’s line-item veto of P26 billion under the Department of Public Works and Highways budget made the 2025 GAA compliant with the constitutional requirement.

The education budget also includes funding for DepEd, the Commission on Higher Education, state universities and colleges, and the Technical Skills and Development Authority.