The slow biodegradation and low hydroxyapatite (HA) conversion of silicate-based bioactive glasses (BGs) have severely limited their compatibility with biological tissues. To address these challenges, four samples in the form of (52-x)SiO2-24Na2O-24CaO-xP2O5, where x is 2, 4, 6, and 8 mol%, were prepared by a unified melt-quenching method, and the feasibility of P2O5 content fine-tuning in improving glass structure, biodegradability, bioactivity, and antibacterial efficiency was evaluated. The results indicated that as the degree of P2O5 substitution increased, the network structure of the glass became looser, which provided favourable conditions for its degradation. The variation in activation energy for Si4+ ion release from 0.39 eV to 0.25 eV also supported this observation. After 7 days of immersion in simulated body fluid (SBF), analyses by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) confirmed that the Ca-P compounds deposited on the glass surfaces were essentially hydroxycarbonated apatite (HCA), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images revealed that the generation rate of the HCA were positively correlated with the P2O5 content in the glass system. Meanwhile, antibacterial studies showed that after 24 h of incubation, the antibacterial activity of the four glass samples against Escherichia coli (E. coli) successively increased, with the highest percentage reaching 87.13 ± 2.51%. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that controllable degradation and high-level bioactivity can be achieved by modulating the P2O5 content in silicate-based BGs, which proves to be an effective and practicable strategy.