The Announcement

Apple CEO John Ternus brought up the Philippines on Monday, November 2, during Apple’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call, his first as chief executive. Citing Mac growth, he said Apple had “secured our biggest education deal ever for Mac.” The buyer is the Department of Education (DepEd), which plans to deploy 170,000 MacBook Neo laptops to teachers and staff. Ternus described deals like this as a way to bring more users into Apple’s ecosystem. The call also reported Mac revenue of $10.8 billion, up 24 percent from a year earlier.

The laptops fall under the DepEd Computerization Program, the department’s channel for getting devices, software and training into schools, and are meant for more than 16,400 public K-12 schools. DepEd Secretary Sonny Angara described the effort as “investing in our teachers.” Apple did not give a contract value, a delivery schedule or a configuration. Coverage also differs on whether students are included. Ternus’s own words refer to teachers and staff.

The Price

The MacBook Neo is Apple’s entry-level laptop, launched in March at ₱39,990 for the 256GB model in the Philippines. In June, Apple raised that base price to ₱49,990. Multiply 170,000 units by each figure and the total lands between roughly ₱6.8 billion and ₱8.5 billion.

Those are retail prices, and a bulk education contract may be priced differently, so the range is a reference point and not an estimate of the contract. An earnings call is an investor event. It tells shareholders how much demand Apple is seeing. It does not tell taxpayers what the department agreed to pay, who it bought from, or how the purchase was run.

Why the Number Matters

The last large DepEd laptop purchase is a reason to ask. In 2021, DepEd bought 39,583 laptops for ₱2.4 billion through the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM), the government’s central purchasing arm. The Commission on Audit (COA) found that the approved unit price had climbed from ₱35,046.50 in DepEd’s own request to ₱58,300, and said it could not ascertain the basis for the higher figure. The planned number of teacher beneficiaries fell from 68,500 to 39,583. The units carried older, entry-level processors, and the Senate Blue Ribbon committee investigated.

None of that suggests anything is wrong with the new deal. It explains why the price is the first thing worth asking about.

Laptops Next

In August, DepEd said its procurement of more than 250,000 laptops for teachers needed a longer process, because the devices have to meet standards for performance, durability, battery life, warranty and value. The department had distributed voice amplifiers first, under the line “Lapel now. Laptops next.” The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) said 250,000 laptops fall short for nearly 900,000 public school teachers, against an earlier promise of one for every teacher.

What a MacBook Costs a Teacher

A Teacher I, the entry position, earns a basic salary of ₱31,705 a month in 2026 (Salary Grade 11, under the third tranche of Executive Order 64), plus a ₱2,000 Personnel Economic Relief Allowance. At the current retail price, one MacBook Neo is about 1.6 months of that basic pay.

Teachers have borrowed for laptops before. In 2022, ACT said many teachers were borrowing money to buy a laptop for their classes. The wider debt picture is larger. ACT estimates that about 75 percent of public school teachers, roughly 800,000, are in debt, with obligations of ₱319 billion to government and private lenders, a figure the group cited in April.

That month, a group of teachers appealed to a national television program for help. One teacher with nearly 30 years of service said a ₱75,000 loan grew past ₱200,000 after refinancing and deductions, leaving about ₱5,000 in monthly take-home pay. DepEd’s finance undersecretary said private lenders accredited under its Automatic Payroll Deduction System, the payroll arrangement through which DepEd approves lenders, are capped at 7.5 to 9.6 percent interest. He said many of the affected teachers had borrowed from lenders outside that system, which DepEd does not directly oversee. The department’s policy sets a ₱5,000 net take-home floor, and it is studying loan consolidation.

A laptop that arrives free takes one purchase off the list of things teachers have borrowed for. It does nothing about the deductions already on the payslip.

What We Need to Know

• What did DepEd pay per unit and in total?
• Was the purchase made directly from Apple or through authorized resellers, and under which procurement mode?
• Which configuration, warranty and support terms are included?
• Is the 170,000 part of the 250,000-laptop plan?
• When do teachers receive the units, and who is on the list?

DepEd can answer most of these by publishing the contract, which would settle what the earnings call left out.