By Kenneth Christiane L. Basili, Reporter
A HOUSE bill seeks to set a floor of 6% of gross domestic product (GDP) for spending on education, which would reverse recent trends in government spending favoring infrastructure.
Party-list Rep. Antonio L. Tinio and Renee Louise M. Co proposed in House Bill (HB) No. 204 to set the 6% benchmark for funding for the Education department, state universities and government trade schools.
They cited a United Nations (UN) spending recommendation of up to 6% spending to improve education access and quality.
“The bill intends to take a stand that will favor our children and youth, our teachers and education personnel,” they said in the bill’s explanatory note. “Rather than consider it as mere spending, we must view it as high-yield investments in the future.”
The Philippines allocated 3.6% of GDP to education in 2023, according to the World Bank, missing the 4-6% benchmark set by the Incheon Declaration.
With 2025 nominal GDP estimated at $497.5 billion by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the 6% spending proposal would imply education funding of $29.8 billion, or about P1.67 trillion.
The Development Budget Coordination Committee has proposed a P6.793-trillion national budget for 2026, equivalent to 22% of GDP and 7.4% higher than this year’s budget.
“The Philippines’ public expenditure for education never breached 4.4% from 1980 to 2020, and generally below the global average on most years from 1999 to 2019,” the legislators said, citing World Bank data.
“It is also among the worst countries in the Asia-Pacific region in terms of public expenditure for education,” they added.
HB No. 204 falls in line with the constitutional mandate to prioritize education funding. The charter binds the government to make education its largest budget item.
The 2025 national budget has drawn fire over claims that funding for public works was larger than the budget for education, leading the spending plan to be challenged in the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
This year’s spending plan allotted P1.055 trillion for education, 4.3% higher than the P1.007-trillion funding for the Department of Public Works and Highways.
“The 2025 General Appropriations Act has been criticized as according the highest spending to infrastructure… education is already suffering from the disastrous effects of perpetual underfunding,” the legislators said.
