The Department of Education (DepEd) welcomed the bicameral conference committee report on the proposed 2019 national budget, which includes an allocation for teachers’ allowance and the construction of more classrooms.
The DepEd said a “significant provision” of the agency’s budget for 2019 is the P800-million teachers’ allowance which will be given on World Teachers’ Day.
The agency said it negotiated for the allocation as a “simple yet necessary” expression of gratitude for the hard work and contribution of public school teachers to nation-building.
“The leadership of the DepEd remains committed to continuously expanding the scope of employee welfare, empowering teachers through sustained personal and professional development, and improving their working conditions through thorough review and simplification of systems and processes,” it said in a statement.
The DepEd is the agency with the largest number of stakeholders that benefit from the government’s timely delivery of service and resources.
Based on the cash-based budget prepared by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) as part of the 2019 National Expenditure Program (NEP), the DepEd’s allocated budget of P528.8 billion is 72.1 percent of its original proposed budget of P732.28 billion. The amount is 8.9 percent lower than the P580.6 billion the DepEd received last year.
The reduction has been noted by the DepEd as something that is “expected” due to the proposed shift to a cash-based budget system.
“The DepEd comes to Congress with a budget proposal that is significantly lower than previous’ year’s appropriations, but this is not necessarily because of poor performance,” Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis-Briones said.
However, the DepEd assured that public schools nationwide will continue to have additional classrooms amid the decrease in the allocation for new classrooms in the proposed budget for 2019.
The DepEd is set to deliver 81,630 classrooms, which are currently in various stages of implementation, until the end of December 2019.
In its original 2019 budget proposal, the DepEd allocated 47,000 new classrooms as part of its Basic Education Facilities program. However, the DBM’s NEP reflected a significant reduction with 4,110 new classrooms instead.