The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
The government’s subsidy programs for private schools will prioritize the poorest learners in selecting beneficiaries for fiscal year 2025, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian announced on Thursday.
The 2025 national budget includes Gatchalian’s proposed amendments to the special provisions on Government Assistance and Subsidies within the Department of Education’s (DepEd) budget. These amendments emphasize prioritizing learners from low-income households in the Senior High School Voucher Program (SHS-VP) and the Educational Service Contracting (ESC) Program.
Additionally, the ESC program will prioritize learners from congested public schools. Under this program, the government covers the tuition and other fees of students from overcrowded junior public high schools who transfer to private schools contracted by DepEd.
Similarly, the SHS-VP provides subsidies to eligible senior high school learners enrolled in participating private or non-DepEd schools through a voucher system.
For fiscal year 2025, P12.077 billion has been allocated for the ESC, while P27.024 billion has been set aside for the SHS-VP.
Gatchalian highlighted previous issues with these programs, noting that a significant portion of subsidies has gone to non-poor households. He revealed that for School Year (SY) 2020-2021, 68% of ESC beneficiaries were from households with incomes above or equal to the per capita poverty threshold.
Similarly, 59% of ESC beneficiaries during SY 2019-2020 were from non-poor households. Based on data from the 2020 and 2022 Annual Poverty Indicators Surveys (APIS), his office estimated that P8.6 billion in ESC funding has been misallocated.
The SHS-VP program has faced similar challenges. For SY 2020-2021, 70% of beneficiaries were from non-poor households, amounting to P7.21 billion, or 53% of the P13.69 billion budget. In SY 2019-2020, 64% of beneficiaries fell into this category, representing P7.30 billion, or 39% of the P18.76 billion budget.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. signed the P6.326-trillion national budget for 2025 on December 30, 2024. Under Republic Act 12116, which appropriates funds for government operations for the calendar year, the education sector received a total allocation of P1.05 trillion.