DepEd to hire 15,000 in 2020

MANILA -- Education Secretary Leonor Briones said the Department of Education plans to recruit 10,000 public school teachers and 5,000 nonteaching personnel under its proposed 2020 budget.

In a press conference at the SEAMEO INNOTECH in Quezon City, Briones said the move is part of the agency’s commitment to further improve teacher-to-student ratio, enhance learning, and ease the workload of its personnel with the increase in enrolment in public schools nationwide.

“More than being part of our 10-point agenda, we want to stay true to our word that the department is relentless in finding ways to enhance personnel welfare, while at the same time improving the delivery of quality education,” Briones said.

To finance personnel recruitment, DepEd is allocating PHP1.28 billion for the creation of 5,000 new non-teaching positions and PHP1.27 billion for the hiring of 10,000 teachers for the next school year.

Briones reported that the DepEd was able to lower the teacher-to-student ratio to 1:35 for elementary and 1:43 for secondary schools in 2016 and the change “enabled teachers to respond better to the varying learning needs of their students”.

To improve the teachers’ working condition, Briones said the agency

requested from the Department of Budget and Management last year to create non-teaching positions in schools based on the type and amount of ancillary tasks being undertaken by teachers. Computerization program In 2020, DepEd’s Computerization Program (DCP) will receive PHP8.99 billion, a 105.4 percent increase from DCP’s PHP4.38-billion budget in 2019. It will cover 4,300 e-classroom packages and 42,010 multimedia packages for schools which seek to aid teachers in enhancing the delivery of learning in the classrooms. “We recognize the need to provide our teaching and nonteaching personnel with work conditions that will enable them to deliver quality basic education for all. Steadily, we’re ensuring that they are unburdened of ancillary tasks and equipped with necessary tools and materials to develop lifelong Filipino learners,” Briones said. The DCP provides the appropriate technologies to all public schools to enable both teachers and learners to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It also provides relevant information technology structure, networking facilities, and information systems to all levels of governance of the DepEd. (PNA)