Education and Health in the National Budget

.title[
# Education and Health in the National Budget
]
.subtitle[
## A cluster briefing: the trifocal education system, the SUCs, and the health system, 2020-2027
]
.date[
### September 2026
]

---

# Section 1 of 3: The Cluster at a Glance

### The trifocal education system, 119 state universities, and the health system

---

## Executive summary

- **This is the budget's biggest cluster**: basic education (DepEd), higher education (CHED and the **119 state universities and colleges**), skills (TESDA), and health (DOH with its attached councils). Together: **PHP 1,371.0B proposed for FY 2027** -- against **PHP 1,471.0B enacted in 2026**, when Congress added **PHP 160.4B**, the largest addition to any cluster.
- **The 2027 proposal funds classrooms and cuts the delivery layer.** DepEd's school operations rise (+PHP 59B across the three levels, mostly teachers), but **Basic Education Facilities falls PHP 85.4B -> 30.6B (-64%)**, textbooks -67%, computerization -46%, and school feeding -56% -- the very lines Congress loaded in 2026.
- **Free tertiary education is quietly eroding**: CHED's **UAQTE (free tuition) is proposed -26%** (PHP 37.6B -> 27.8B), **Tulong Dunong is zeroed** (PHP 2.7B -> 0), and the SUC envelope dips -2.4% -- with **UP taking the largest peso cut (-PHP 3.0B, -10%)** while Mindanao SUCs gain.
- **Health repeats the ayuda pattern**: **MAIFIP -- medical assistance, the AICS of hospitals -- is cut PHP 51.7B -> 24.2B (-53%)** after years of congressional build-up; facilities (HFEP) -35%; while the health workforce line (+9%), the Cancer Assistance Fund (+150%), and health promotion (+129%) rise.
- **Execution splits by program type**, as everywhere: DepEd disburses 86%, the SUCs 81% -- but **CHED pays out barely half (44-55%)** of scholarship money, **TESDA 48.5%**, and DOH 69%. The free-tuition erosion and the scholarship pipelines that cannot pay are the same conversation.

---

## A few notes on the data (1 of 2)

.small[
- **Two data sources.** DepEd, CHED, DOH, and TESDA are analyzed at **P/A/P level** from the full compilation of DBM budget documents (NEP and GAA, FY 2020-2027, current-year new appropriations, nominal pesos). **SUC P/A/P data is still being encoded**, so the 119 SUCs enter at **agency level** from a separate compilation, using NEP and GAA **new appropriations** -- the same basis -- plus utilisation. SUC program detail (per-campus free-tuition billings, infrastructure) is a later addition.
- **Utilisation figures are agency-level, not P/A/P-level**: they describe how each institution moves money as a whole, not how any single program performs -- but they still bound it. Rates are computed **against allotments, which include continuing appropriations**. FY 2026 utilisation is not yet complete.
- **Blanks are never zeroes.** The 2027 GAA has not been enacted; every 2027 figure is the NEP.
- **Department totals include attached agencies**: DepEd's books carry the National Museum, the ECCD Council, and other small bodies; DOH's carry the AIDS Council (PNAC), the Nutrition Council, and the Commission on Population. These are kept in the department totals and shown separately where they matter.
]

---

## A few notes on the data (2 of 2)

.small[
- **Large health and education money sits outside these books**: **PhilHealth's premium subsidy for indirect contributors does not appear in these agency-level lines** (the zero-subsidy fight of recent GAAs happened in provisions outside this compilation's scope); the specialty hospitals (Heart Center, Kidney Institute, Lung Center, Children's Medical Center) and PGH are government corporations funded through budgetary support; most day-to-day primary care is devolved to LGUs and financed from their internal revenue shares.
- **The ECCD Council moved from DepEd's books to DILG's** over the period; it is mapped by agency into one continuous series and kept in this cluster's basic-education pillar -- early-childhood care is where the education system starts, wherever the council is administratively parked.
- **TESDA appears in both this cluster and Labor & Social Protection** -- institutions may appear in more than one cluster briefing; what matters is that each sector can see itself in the briefing it attends. Here TESDA is read as the third leg of the **trifocal education system** (basic-DepEd, higher-CHED/SUCs, technical-TESDA).
- **The GASTPE restructuring is a merge, not a cut**: the 2027 NEP folds the Educational Service Contracting line (PHP 12.4B) and the SHS Voucher line (PHP 26.5B) into one "Government Assistance and Subsidies" line (PHP 38.1B) -- a PHP 0.7B reduction on a PHP 38.9B base, shown merged in the charts.
- **Units and short forms:** departments in **PHP billions**, small agencies in **PHP millions**; **LFP/FAP** = locally-/foreign-assisted project; **UAQTE** = Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education (RA 10931 free tuition); **MAIFIP** = Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially-Incapacitated Patients. Totals may not add due to rounding.
]

---

## The cluster in one table

<table class="table table-condensed table-striped" style="font-size: 15px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th style="text-align:left;"> Pillar </th>
   <th style="text-align:left;"> Institutions </th>
   <th style="text-align:left;"> FY 2027 proposal </th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
<tbody>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Basic education </td>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> DepEd (incl. National Museum and other attached bodies); ECCD Council (now under DILG) </td>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> PHP 916.9B </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Higher education </td>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> CHED; 119 State Universities and Colleges (agency-level) </td>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> PHP 169.2B </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Skills </td>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> TESDA (the trifocal system's third leg; also in the Labor &amp; Social Protection briefing) </td>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> PHP 20.9B </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Health </td>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> DOH (incl. PNAC, the Nutrition Council, and the Commission on Population) </td>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> PHP 264.0B </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Cluster total </td>
   <td style="text-align:left;">  </td>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> PHP 1,371.0B </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

.small[
Scale check: this cluster is **larger than the other two cluster briefings combined**, and DepEd alone is two-thirds of it -- the constitutional mandate that education get the largest share of the budget runs through this table.
]

---

## Big picture: the largest congressional additions of any cluster

.small[
Education and health are where Congress adds most visibly -- and where the next proposal most visibly declines to carry the additions. The 2027 NEP sits **PHP 100.0B below** the 2026 GAA, almost exactly the sum of the facilities, textbook, feeding, free-tuition, and medical-assistance reductions in the slides that follow.
]

---

## Composition: two-thirds DepEd

---

## How the money moves: obligation vs disbursement, FY 2025

.small[
Reading guide: a **wide grey gap** means money committed but not reaching payees within the year. The pattern is programmatic: institutions that run payrolls and campuses execute; institutions that push money through **scholarship and voucher pipelines** (CHED, TESDA) stall.
]

---

# Section 2 of 3: The Pillars and the Sectors

### Basic education, the free-tuition system, the SUCs, skills, and health

---

## DepEd: two-thirds of the cluster, and a 2026 like no other

.small[
DepEd executes well for its size -- **93% obligation, 86% disbursement** -- because most of its budget is teachers' salaries paid on time. The story is in the composition: what the 2026 GAA added, and what the 2027 proposal keeps, next slide.
]

---

## Inside DepEd: school operations rise, the delivery layer collapses

.small[
**Up**: school operations +PHP 59B across the three levels (mostly teachers), allowances +7.5B; a PHP 10.8B World Bank learning-recovery project (PLUS-D) enters. **Down**: **Basic Education Facilities PHP 85.4B -> 30.6B** (classroom construction is DepEd's insertion magnet), **textbooks -67%**, computerization -46%, **feeding -56%**, new positions -25%. The proposal funds the teacher in the room and defunds the room.
]

---

## Free college, eroding: CHED and the UAQTE

.small[
RA 10931 made free tuition an entitlement, but the money behind it is discretionary in practice: **UAQTE billings from SUCs and LUCs have outrun appropriations for years, and the 2027 proposal widens the gap by PHP 9.8B**. Congress zeroing-in on Tulong Dunong (its own PHP 2.7B add in 2026) repeats the restore-it-again cycle. The execution caveat cuts the other way here: **CHED disbursed only 44-55% of allotments in 2023-2025** -- the billing-validation pipeline is as much the bottleneck as the appropriation.
]

---

## The 119 SUCs: a growing envelope, and Congress's favorite sector

.small[
SUCs are congressional home turf: every legislator has campuses in the district, and the enacted line has beaten the proposal in **all seven GAAs**. The system executes reasonably (**93% obligation, 81% disbursement in 2025**), better than the scholarship bodies that finance its students.
]

---

## Where SUC money sits: the top twenty

---

## SUC winners and losers in the 2027 proposal

.small[
The geography is legible: **Mindanao State (+PHP 435M), North Eastern Mindanao State, Caraga State, and West Visayas State** lead the increases, while the **flagship national institutions -- UP (-PHP 3.0B), the Philippine Normal University (-25%, the country's teacher-education flagship amid a learning crisis), PUP (-7.7%)** -- absorb the cuts. Whether each SUC's 2026 level was proposal or congressional add is worth checking campus by campus before the hearings.
]

---

## TESDA: the trifocal system's third leg

.small[
Read alongside CHED, the pattern is one system-wide problem: **the post-secondary financing pipelines cannot pay out what Congress puts in** -- TESDA's disbursement collapsed to **48.5%** as its scholarship line doubled, and the 2027 proposal cuts that line -41%. For students, a smaller scholarship pot that actually pays beats a bigger one that doesn't; the ask is delivery reform alongside any restoration.
]

---

## DOH: health nearly tripled -- and 2027 trims the build-up

.small[
DOH's execution is the health system's quiet constraint: **87-92% obligated but only 69-73% disbursed** across 2023-2025 -- commodity procurement and facility construction move slowly, which matters for a proposal that shifts money toward exactly those.
]

---

## Inside DOH: the medical-assistance cut and what rises instead

.small[
**MAIFIP is the AICS of hospitals** -- bill assistance distributed through officeholders -- and the proposal cuts it **PHP 51.7B -> 24.2B (-53%)**; **HFEP (facilities) -35%**. Rising instead: the **health workforce (+9%)**, the **Cancer Assistance Fund (+150%)**, health promotion (+129%), hospitals held at PHP 129.8B. A coherent shift from discretionary assistance toward capacity -- colliding head-on with the same congressional politics as AICS.
]

---

## The small bodies of the two systems

<table class="table table-condensed table-striped" style="font-size: 14px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th style="text-align:left;"> Agency </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> 2026 GAA (M) </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> 2027 NEP (M) </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> vs 2026 GAA </th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
<tbody>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Teacher Education Council </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 562.9 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 357.7 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> -36.4% </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> National Nutrition Council </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 304.5 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 333.2 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> +9.4% </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> National Book Development Board </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 202.1 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 165.2 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> -18.2% </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> ECCD Council (now under DILG) </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 356.8 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 123.8 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> -65.3% </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Philippine National AIDS Council </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 63.2 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 75.5 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> +19.5% </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> Commission on Population </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;">  </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;">  </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> NA% </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

.small[
Four read-throughs: the **AIDS Council's PHP 75.5M** remains the only HIV-named money in the budget, against one of the fastest-growing epidemics in the Asia-Pacific. The **ECCD Council is cut -65%** -- its provider-accreditation line collapses PHP 207M -> 25M just as the system it accredits (LGU child development centers) is where the learning crisis begins; its disbursement slid to 67%. The **Commission on Population (-16%)** loses again. The **Teacher Education Council (tripled)** is the one to watch: it runs the teacher-quality reforms.
]

---

## Can the systems execute? Four trajectories, FY 2020-2025

.small[
The free-tuition erosion and CHED's execution record belong in one sentence at the hearings: **an entitlement whose money arrives at half-speed is being cut on the grounds that it doesn't spend** -- fixing the billing-validation pipeline is the precondition for defending the appropriation.
]

---

# Section 3 of 3: The FY 2027 Proposal and Engaging the Process

### Defending classrooms, free tuition, and health capacity

---

## The FY 2027 proposal, institution by institution

<table class="table table-condensed table-striped" style="font-size: 15px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th style="text-align:left;"> Institution </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> 2026 GAA (B) </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> Congress 2026 (B) </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> 2027 NEP (B) </th>
   <th style="text-align:right;"> vs 2026 GAA </th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
<tbody>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> DepEd (incl. attached) </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 961.3 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> +86.8 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 916.8 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> -4.6% </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> DOH (incl. PNAC, NNC, CPD) </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 297.9 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> +44.0 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 264.0 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> -11.4% </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> SUCs (119 institutions) </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 137.9 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> +9.1 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 134.6 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> -2.4% </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> CHED </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 47.5 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> +14.4 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 34.6 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> -27.2% </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> TESDA </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 26.1 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> +6.1 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 20.9 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> -19.8% </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td style="text-align:left;"> ECCD Council </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 0.4 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> +0.0 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> 0.1 </td>
   <td style="text-align:right;"> -65.3% </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

.small[
Every institution in the cluster is proposed below its 2026 enacted level, and the "Congress 2026" column shows why: the proposal declines to carry PHP 160.4B of congressional additions -- facilities, feeding, textbooks, Tulong Dunong, SUC top-ups, MAIFIP. The whole cluster's 2027 politics is the fate of that column.
]

---

## Reading the FY 2027 proposal

- **The delivery-layer cuts are the fight.** Teachers are funded; the classroom (-64%), the textbook (-67%), the meal (-56%), and the free-tuition subsidy (-26%) are not. These are the most defensible restorations in the entire budget -- and the flood-control precedent applies: **restore with published school-level lists**, since facilities and feeding are also basic education's insertion magnets.
- **Treat MAIFIP exactly like AICS.** A -53% cut to hospital bill assistance will not survive Congress; the realistic position is restoration **with the transparency the twins now demand everywhere** -- guarantee-letter registries, hospital-level disclosure -- while protecting the proposal's genuine gains (workforce +9%, cancer fund +150%, health promotion +129%).
- **Defend free tuition by fixing its pipeline.** UAQTE's -26% will be argued as an execution problem, and CHED's 44-55% disbursement makes the argument stick. The counter is not louder advocacy but a **billing-validation reform rider** attached to full restoration -- and the same logic for TESDA's scholarships at 48.5%.
- **Ask each SUC one question**: was your 2026 level proposal or insertion? UP's -10% and PNU's -25% are cuts to *proposed* bases and deserve flat restoration; campuses whose 2026 spike was a congressional add need the project-list treatment.
- **Apply the execution test everywhere**: DepEd (86%) and the SUCs (81%) have earned their asks; CHED, TESDA, and DOH's capital lines need delivery plans stapled to their restorations.

---

## For discussion

- **1. Which restorations do the sectors rank first?** PHP 100.0B separates the proposal from the 2026 GAA. If the coalition can realistically defend a third of that, what is the order -- classrooms, feeding, textbooks, UAQTE, MAIFIP, SUC top-ups -- and what does each restoration cost in transparency conditions?

- **2. Is the facilities cut partly right?** PHP 85.4B of school construction in one year strained DepEd's delivery, and classroom insertions have their own scandal history. Would the sectors accept a lower, multi-year facilities program with published school-level lists over a restored one-year spike?

- **3. Who speaks for the unnamed lines?** HIV treatment sits inside a cut commodity line with only PNAC's PHP 75.5M carrying the name; family planning loses again at POPCOM. Should the health sectors demand named sub-lines -- the disaggregation ask from the rights cluster -- as their transparency position?

- **4. The teacher-quality bet.** Operations +PHP 59B and a tripled Teacher Education Council amount to a wager that the learning crisis is solved in the classroom, not the supply closet. What evidence would the education groups want DepEd to commit to publishing so the bet can be evaluated?

- **5. One post-secondary position.** CHED scholarships, TESDA scholarships, and SUC budgets are argued separately every year while all three feed the same students. Is a joint free-post-secondary position -- appropriations plus pipeline reform across all three -- stronger than three separate fights?

---

# Thank you

### Education and Health in the National Budget
#### A cluster briefing, 2020-2027

.footnote[Underlying data: DBM NEP & GAA documents (current-year new appropriations, P/A/P level) for DepEd, CHED, DOH, and TESDA, FY 2020-2027; agency-level compilation (new appropriations and utilisation) for the 119 SUCs, whose P/A/P data is pending encoding. Utilisation rates are agency-level, not P/A/P-level, computed against allotments including continuing appropriations, through FY 2025. FY 2027 figures are the proposal (NEP); the 2027 GAA has not been enacted. PhilHealth premium subsidies, the specialty-hospital corporations, and LGU-devolved primary care sit outside these lines. TESDA also appears in the Labor & Social Protection briefing.]