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TODAY the Department of Education (DepEd) is scheduled to appear again before the Senate Finance Committee to deliberate on the proposed the DepEd 2015 budget in the amount of P364,958,422. The DepEd’s proposed 2015 budget is also scheduled for plenary deliberations in the House of Representatives on September 26. Article XIV, Section 5(5) provides that the State “shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education.” Is this mandate being followed?
“Yes,” and it may be said that the present Aquino administration, in terms of the increase in the DepEd’s budget, showed that it is the most committed (compared to all administrations which served under the 1987 Constitution) to achieving our dream of “providing quality basic education for all.” Consistent with the aforementioned constitutional provision, the DepEd has been getting the highest budget allocation among all the other government agencies.
The proposed P364,958,422 DepEd budget for 2015 is 14 percent of our P2.6 trillion 2015 national budget. Comparing this to the Deped’s budget in 2009 (prior to the assumption of President Aquino) which amounted to P174,468,462, it may be said that the present DepEd budget has increased more than 100 percent as its present budget is more than twice its budget in 2009. It may also be important to note that the 2009 DepEd budget represents 12.33 percent of the national budget at that time.
The “average annual growth rate” of the DepEd budget for the last 10 years, meaning the measure of increase or growth in the DepEd’s budget compared to the previous year expressed in percentage terms, is 13.2 percent. Again, the highest increase in the DepEd’s budget happened during this Aquino administration in 2013 when the DepEd’s budget grew by 22.88 percent compared to 2012. The 2015 DepEd budget, if approved, shall mean a 17.95-percent increase compared to the 2014 budget.
Of course, these increases in the DepEd budget resulted in the closing of the 2010 gap in classrooms that we inherited when the DepEd caused the construction of more or less 66,813 classrooms as of December 2013. Last year, we hired more or less 61,000 teachers. This year, we hired another 33,000 teachers. Almost all teachers paid by local government units (LGU) are now “regularized.” Other needs in chairs and toilets are, likewise, now addressed. Finally, we are now not only talking about classrooms, teachers, toilets, books or chairs; we are now also talking about an enhanced K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum, where our children will now be ready after graduation in senior high school to enter the world of work, entrepreneurship or college.
Thanks to Education Undersecretary Francisco Varela, the DepEd’s Office of Planning Service under Education Assistant Secretary Jesus Mateo and Roger Masapol; and DepEd’s Budget Division under Education Assistant Secretary Mandy Ruiz for the data and figures that I mentioned in this article.Please feel free to share any of your education-related concern by e-mailing me at tonisito.umali@deped.gov.ph or writing to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Legal and Legislative Affairs, DepEd Complex, Meralco Avenue, Pasig City.
Lawyer Toni Umali is the current assistant secretary for Legal and Legislative Affairs of the Department of Education (DepEd). He is licensed to practice law not only in the Philippines but also in the State of California and some Federal Courts in the United States of America after passing the California State Bar Examinations in 2004. He is also a member of the National Board of the National Union of Career Executive Service Officers, an organization of career executive service officers comprising the “third level” or the managerial class in the group of career positions in the Philippine civil service. The Career Executive Service was created by Presidential Decree 1 to “form a continuing pool of well-selected and development-oriented career administrators who shall provide competent and faithful service.” He has served as legal consultant to several legislators and local chief executives. As DepEd assistant secretary, he was instrumental in the passage of the K to 12 law and the issuance of its implementing rules and regulations. He is also the alternate spokesman of the DepEd.