MANILA, Philippines 鈥� Another petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking to declare the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) unconstitutional for allegedly circumventing the constitutional directive to allocate the biggest budget to education.
The Teachers鈥� Dignity Coalition, Freedom from Debt Coalition, and the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates submitted a petition for certiorari and prohibition on Monday, asking the high tribunal to strike down the 2025 GAA, or Republic Act No. 12116, for violating Section 5(5), Article XIV of the Constitution.
It mandates that 鈥渢he State shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education and ensure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment.鈥�
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They also urged the high court to issue a temporary restraining order and a writ of prohibition, directing the President to desist from implementing the 2025 national budget and prohibiting the respondents from disbursing public funds for its enforcement and implementation.
Named respondents in the case, docketed as G.R. No. 279199, are President Marcos, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, the Senate, and the House of Representatives.
P1.05-T allocation
Under this year鈥檚 national budget of P6.326 trillion, the education sector is receiving the highest allocation at P1.05 trillion.
However, the petitioners argued that the education sector鈥檚 budget was only significantly increased by aggregating nontraditional education-related funds from various agencies and offices.
These included funding for the Philippine Military Academy, the Philippine National Police Academy, the Philippine Public Safety College under the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the Local Government Academy, the National Defense College of the Philippines, and the Philippine Science High School System and the Science Education Institute, both under the Department of Science and Technology.
This same argument of 鈥渂loating鈥� the education budget was also raised in earlier petitions challenging the 2025 GAA.
鈥淭he inclusion of noneducation-related spending strays from the functional composition of the education sector, namely the Department of Education, state universities and colleges, the Commission on Higher Education, and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, which collectively garnered a combined budget of P913 billion, a poor second to infrastructure,鈥� the petitioners argued.
They also cited education data from global and national institutions revealing that 鈥渆ducation in the country is in crisis.鈥�
鈥淣ever before has there been a more unjust and callous national budget in this country. The petitioners, thus, urgently implore this honorable Supreme Court to correct this gross injustice,鈥� they said.