THE GOVERNMENT should not scrimp in giving support to teachers if it really wants to improve the state of education in the country, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers said.

It issued the statement a day after Education Secretary Sara Duterte called on all stakeholders to give their all to avert the further deterioration of education.

“Secretary Duterte argued that if those responsible for our children’s learning and the learners themselves only give half of their efforts for education, education reforms cannot succeed. We say, for as long as the government only provides for half of the needs of education, the learning crisis cannot be averted,” Vladimer Quetua, the group’s chairperson, said.

“Since 2010 to 2019, the government has only been spending amounts equating from 2.2 percent to 3.6 percent of the gross domestic product to education, according to the Philippine Institute for Domestic Studies, while the United Nations standard for education budget is 6 percent of the GDP. For 2023, the total budget for all education agencies only amounts to 3.6 percent of the GDP, with the DepEd’s budget equivalent to only 3 percent of the GDP. How can we traverse the long and difficult road to education recovery with our fuel tank only half full?” Quetua said.

He asked Duterte to convince the executive and legislative branches to provide bigger allocation to address the shortage in education facilities and resources.

Quetua added that teachers “have for so long been giving it our 200 percent as we shoulder responsibilities that are no longer our duties and spend out-of-pocket to fill in the gaps, just so that education can continue.”

“How will our situation change when the government only provided for the construction of 6,000 classrooms this year while more than 100,000 or one third of our existing classrooms are no longer fit for use, based of Secretary Duterte’s Basic Education Report? With the continuing underspending of government in education, we cannot foresee a major change in our situation, much less a significant rebound for education,” he said.