SENATOR Loren Legarda on Tuesday sponsored a measure seeking to strengthen the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, or Republic Act No. 10931, by ensuring that the Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) explicitly prioritizes the most vulnerable and marginalized Filipino learners.

Submitted under Committee Report No. 31, Senate Bill No. 1894 substitutes several earlier measures to introduce targeted reforms in the country’s free higher education system.

Legarda cited findings of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2), which showed that while RA 10931 successfully improved college participation among the poorest households from 4.6 percent in 2014 to 19.7 percent in 2022, the actual targeting of the TES significantly deteriorated.

The Commission found that the share of the poorest students—those from Listahanan and Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) households—receiving the TES dropped sharply from 70.73 percent in 2018 to just 22.89 percent in 2022.

Furthermore, 2024 data showed that only 1.23 percent of 4Ps senior high school completers were able to access the TES as first-year beneficiaries.

“The Tertiary Education Subsidy was meant to be our instrument of that promise. It was designed to prioritize the academically capable children of the poorest of the poor,” Legarda said.

“Children for whom a college degree is not a matter of preference, but a doorway out of poverty and into dignity—for their families and for the generations that follow. We meant it then. We must mean it now. Yet meaning something is not the same as delivering it,” she added.

To address these inequities, Senate Bill No. 1894 explicitly mandates that the allocation of the TES prioritize students from households included in the Listahanan, ranked according to estimated per capita household income.

The bill also guarantees TES support for senior high school graduates from 4Ps households and establishes a clear ranking system to ensure subsidies systematically reach the most financially vulnerable.