WHILE PRESIDENT MACAPAGAL-ARROYO trumpets her administration's investments in education, education reformers yesterday said the share of the Department of Education (DepEd) of the national budget has actually declined in the last four years.
Professor Flora Arellano, Vice-President of E-Net Philippines, a civil society coalition advocating educational reforms, said DepEd's share of the budget had shrunk from12.74 percent in 2006, 12.19 percent in 2007, 11.9% in 2008, to just 11.8% this year.
"The DepEd budget in absolute terms (has been) increasing (but it) is falling way short in relative terms," Arellano said at a forum at the Richmonde Hotel in Pasig City.
She added that an additional P6Billion was needed in the proposed 2010 DepEd budget so the country would meet the United Nations' Education for All (EFA) targets by 2015.
"The proposed budget speaks very little about quality, equity, the out-of-school, the illiterates and the unreached," Arellano said, adding that the accepted international benchmark was for the education budget to take up "twenty percent" of the whole national budget.
She said 2010 would be a "critical year" for education as "it marks the final stretch to Education for All (EFA) 2015."
"In 2010, countries will be conducting it's 'End Decade Assessment' to check progress in meeting EFA. The Philippines will be conducting its own assessment and the picture does not seem to be rosy," Arellano said.
