Teachers returning to their classrooms
LEADING the Department of Education (DepEd) is a thankless task because it is plagued with problems. One of them is the lack of funds to hire more teachers for public schools.
One way to mitigate this is to bring our teachers back to the classrooms — to teach. Last Friday, Education Secretary and Vice President Sara Duterte signed a policy to immediately remove the administrative tasks from the regular duties of public schoolteachers.
Department Order 002, Series of 2024, will enable teachers to perform the task they were originally trained for.
“Let us bring our teachers back to the classrooms,” Duterte said in a statement.
“To ensure effective implementation, along with the filling up of 5,000 administrative personnel for 2023 and another 5,000 administrative personnel for 2024, we will also provide additional Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses to enable our schools to hire the necessary administrative support staff.”
The Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) think tank conducted a study on this issue in 2019. It cautioned against giving administrative tasks to teachers, as it distracts them from their main job — to educate our students in an increasingly complex and globalized world. And in the context of our students’ low scores in reading, writing, science and mathematics across the board, teachers have their work cut out for them.
Among the tasks that were taken away from the teachers’ plates are the following: personnel administration, custodians of property and overseers of physical facilities, general administrative support, financial management, records management, feeding program coordinators, and school disaster risk reduction and management coordinators.
Moreover, public school teachers are enlisted for various government-related projects, including serving during elections, for which payment is invariably delayed.
To fill the gap, a transitory provision requires school division offices (SDS) to quickly do clustering strategies. Administrative support services will then be deployed to clustered schools, which are located near each other.
Current administrative responsibilities are also transferred from the teachers to the school heads and non-teaching personnel. There is also an ongoing recruitment of administrative support personnel, which should be finished in 60 days.
The DepED has also provided a calamity fund and instituted a policy on overload pay. “We will enable more teachers to be rightfully compensated for hours of actual classroom teaching beyond the six-hour limit [per day] prescribed under the Magna Carta for Teachers,” Duterte said.
It was made clear that the two extra hours per day of the teachers should be allocated for class preparation, marking of papers and consultation hours with their students.
‘Long overdue’
Expectedly, the bee in the bonnet of the DepEd was quick to release its sting.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) said Duterte’s action was “long overdue.” ACT claimed that the promise to remove the albatross of administrative tasks from the teachers’ backs had already been made in the 2023 Basic Education Report.
ACT said that “with almost 50,000 schools suffering from being understaffed, we need at least two administrative staff per school to truly unload the teachers from being overworked.”
“The allocation of 10,000 administrative staff positions nationwide appears exaggerated in terms of its potential to relieve the teachers of their administrative duties,” it said.
Diving deeply into the deficiencies of the department, ACT further said that the department did not report its lackluster record in building maintenance. The group claimed that “two out of three school buildings are currently in bad shape.”
Earlier, the Department of Budget and Management turned down the petition of more than 60,000 public schoolteachers for a 36-percent increase in the take-home pay of entry-level teachers and college instructors. The petition aimed to attract more Education graduates to teach instead of working graveyard shifts in call centers or working as nannies overseas.
The World Bank is now conducting a study of teachers’ salaries. Its findings will be submitted to Duterte’s office.
In a welcome development, the DepEd also expanded the feeding programs in the public schools from the present 120 days to the full school year. A United Nations Development Program study showed that the poorest provinces with the most malnourished children come from those run by political dynasties.
There is a connection then between good governance and healthy children. But since we are a country run by bickering political dynasties, this does not bode well for the country’s future.