With the proposed budget for education facing cuts, Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano challenged the Department of Education (DepEd) to find a major reform that could improve the country’s education system in 2027 without relying solely on increased spending.
“If we keep doing and expecting different results it won’t happen, but sometimes you have to have a radical change. There has to be this one thing that can be done in 2027,” Cayetano said during DepEd’s budget briefing for its proposed 2027 budget on October 16, 2026.
Cayetano noted that the proposed education budget had declined from P961 billion under the 2026 General Appropriations Act to P916 billion in the 2027 National Expenditure Program and P910 billion in the proposed General Appropriations Bill.
He urged lawmakers to find additional funding while calling on DepEd to make the most of its available resources. Cayetano stressed that even with budget constraints, smarter and targeted spending could bring substantial improvements in learning outcomes.
“How do we spend more but spend smarter? Let me leave that challenge to all of us. Hopefully we can increase your budget, but even given that limitation, how do we drastically improve our education system? I hope it will come out here [during this budget briefing] in the Senate,” he said.
Cayetano also raised the possibility of reconsidering the K to 12 program, proposed funding packages for local government units (LGUs) to build schools in overcrowded areas, and called for including sports, culture and the arts in the education cluster.
He also pointed to disparities in resources between the Philippine Science High School and regular public schools, as well as the high dropout and stunting rates in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
With less than two years left in the current administration, Cayetano emphasized the need for concrete reforms to address long-standing gaps in the education system and ensure better learning outcomes for Filipino students.
“As we end this administration, [let’s] throw everything into education. Hope [that] the momentum is there and hope whoever takes over in the next administration does even a better job,” the senator said. ###