MANILA – The Department of Education (DepEd) is still far short of teaching personnel, according to ACT Teachers party-list.
A total of 5,858 teachers are needed for school year 2018-2019, party-list representatives Antonio Tinio and France Castro said.
Only 75,242 new teaching positions were created under the 2018 budget out of the 81,100 items the DepEd requested, said Tinio.
No new special education teaching positions or jobs for elementary and junior high school teachers were created, he said.
Moreover, reports showed that contractual teachers are hired based on Local School Board funds to compensate for the shortage of nationally paid teachers, said the party-list congressman.
But “even if all of the proposed positions were granted and filled in addition to the 687,229 public school teachers nationwide in 2017, our staffing condition will still be far from the ideal,” Tinio said.
The Philippines has a primary school teacher-pupil ratio of 1:31, according to the 2016 United Nations Human Development Report.
“This is a far bid from the ratio of 1:11 in Malaysia, 1:15 in Thailand, 1:17 in Indonesia, 1:19 in Vietnam, and even 1:28 in Myanmar,” said Castro.
“In short, if we are to be at par with the standards of our neighboring countries’ teacher-pupil ratios, we have to double the number of teaching items created and teachers hired,” she said.
She also lamented the lack of school support staff among teachers and school administrators.
With 687,229 teachers and 38,284 nonteaching personnel and support staff, only one person support 18 teachers in all the operations of public schools nationwide, 2017 DepEd data showed.
“This leads to overwork of public school teachers already receiving meager salaries and so accustomed to shelling out of their own pockets to provide for their classroom needs,” Castro said. “It also contributes to the general decline of the quality of education.”
ACT Teachers party-list called on the DepEd and the Department of Budget and Management to address the shortage of teaching and nonteaching personnel, among other problems in the education system.
“We remind the Duterte administration of its constitutional duty to provide decent pay, working conditions and security of tenure to state workers,” it said./PN
