VP Sara gives up DepEd's P150M confidential funds for 2024

Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte is also letting go of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) P150 million confidential funds for 2024.

This was disclosed by Senator Pia Cayetano, sponsor of DepEd’s proposed budget, during the Senate plenary deliberations on the bill containing the national budget for 2024.

“We are all parents who want to protect our children. Ang seguridad ng mga bata ay seguridad ng kinabukasan ng ating bayan. Nonetheless, DepEd will no longer pursue confidential funds," Cayetano, citing Duterte's statement, said. 

"We humbly request that the funds be realigned to the National Learning Recovery Program because we do not expect good scores for the 2022 PISA results coming out this December," the senator added. 

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or PISA is a global reading comprehension study conducted by the inter-government group Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on 600,000 students aged 15 years old around the world.

The Philippines joined the study in 2018 and ended up the poorest out of 79 countries after Filipino students scored a mean of 340 points, way below the OECD average of 487 points.

The National Learning Recovery Program seeks to address the learning gaps among students that were heightened by school closures and disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Based on DepEd Order 13 issued in July, the NLRP also aims to deal with the “low performance” of learners in international large-scale assessments and national assessments.

Five subprograms under the NLRP are designed to help strengthen the learning recovery, namely: National Learning Camp, National Reading Program, National Mathematics Program, National Science and Technology Program, and other programs implemented by the central office and field offices.

In August, Duterte highlighted the need for DepEd’s P150 million confidential funds in 2024 because it is “intertwined with national security.”

“Because education is intertwined with national security. Napakahalaga na (it is very important that) we mold children who are patriotic, children who will love our country, and who will defend our country,” Duterte earlier said.

In October, the Vice President said “whoever is against confidential funds is against peace. Whoever is against peace is an enemy of the nation.”

Duterte's father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, previously said that the Vice President intends to use her offices' proposed confidential and intelligence funds to revive the mandatory Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program in the country.

VP Sara who is also the Education secretary has been pushing for the revival of the mandatory ROTC, more than two decades after the program was scrapped in 2002.

Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, Duterte’s ally, commended the Vice President’s decision, saying this would spare the Senate from debates.

“Ako po’y nagpapasalamat from the bottom of my heart to our DepEd secretary for forgetting about the confidential funds and it spared the Senate from debates regarding this issue,” Dela Rosa said in his manifestation during the plenary debates on DepEd’s budget.

During the deliberations on the 2024 proposed budget of the Office of the Vice President earlier in the day, Senator Sonny Angara said the OVP is also letting go of its P500 million requested confidential funds for next year.

In October, the House of Representatives announced that it has removed P1.23 billion worth of confidential funds of five agencies, including the OVP and the DepEd.—AOL, GMA Integrated News