The House subcommittee on budget amendments on Wednesday approved an additional P56.6 billion for the education sector, setting up the proposed 2026 national budget to deliver the largest education funding in Philippine history.
Appropriations chair and Nueva Ecija Rep. Mikaela Suansing said the increase covered, among others, an additional P35 billion for the Department of Education’s basic education facilities, P414 million for its computerization program, and P4 billion to cover part of the government’s three-year funding shortfall for state universities and colleges (SUCs).
SUCs would also receive an extra P1.8 billion for campus infrastructure, while the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) is set to gain P3.6 billion more for its Training for Work Scholarship Program and Special Training for Employment Program.
These augmentations are on top of the P1.224-trillion education allocation in the 2026 National Expenditure Program (NEP). If approved by the Senate and retained in their reconciled version of the 2026 General Appropriations Bill, this would mean that the education sector would receive P1.280 billion in total.
Budget exceeds 4% of GDP
The increases, Suansing added, would push education spending past 4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) – a long-recommended international benchmark.
‘This is unprecedented,’ Suansing said during Wednesday’s meeting of the Budget Amendments Review Subcommittee. ‘This is the first time in history.This will be the highest education budget in history.’
Last Sept. 22, the BARSc had already moved to augment the budget of several agencies, including the education cluster, using the P255 billion originally cut from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH)’s flood control projects.
However, ‘once the agencies saw which ones were included in the BARSc proposal, some of us came back to us and said if you’re allocating this much to our agency, can we ask for funding in this item instead, as this is the more urgent priority,’ Suansing said.
The BARSc – constituted for the first time in the history of Congress – is part of Suansing’s reforms to make the budget process more transparent and accessible in a bid to avoid a repeat of the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA). /mr