As DepEd poises to hire learner support aides or para-teachers, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines urged the agency to instead hire at least 150,000 teachers with own teaching load and not teaching aides to enable either the lowering to five teaching load rather than six or the reduction of class size to 40 instead of 50. The group forwards the hiring of retrenched private school teachers as priority, then the hiring of college graduates with a degree in education to augment the agency’s teaching workforce. The budget for such should come from the DepEd Central Office's MOOE and not from schools.
“The shift to remote learning and the lack of ample state support for such has more than doubled the workload—not to mention the expenses—of already overworked public school teachers. This will likely result in further decline of education quality and burn out among our educators. In that note, we find it necessary for the government to ease teachers’ workload by hiring more teaching personnel,” called Basilio.
He detailed that every class of about 50–60 students has as much parents who are all assisted by and regularly in contact with teachers; add to that how each class employs various modalities with materials adapted for such, compelling them to orient all stakeholders on how to go about these modes.
“Given these, we’ll need an additional 150,000 personnel to take on teaching loads to reduce teaching time to 5 hours or to redistribute students to classes of only 40. This will bring significant relief from the strains caused by the demands of education delivery amid the pandemic,” argued Basilio.
Basilio cited that the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers provides that teachers must have a maximum of six teaching hours while the remaining two should be used for other teaching-related tasks. And as teaching takes on a different, more complicated form under blended learning, he called on DepEd not to rigidly impose the maximum, especially in light of shortages in state input.
ACT estimates that P45 billion will be needed to complete the 150,000 teaching personnel with a salary similar to that of a Teacher 1, which may be sourced from the Central Office’s huge allocation for Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses. The group furthered that displaced private school teachers must be prioritized for employment, many of whom have years of experience in the teaching profession. Next in line will be degree-holders in education.
“Since we want these personnel to perform teaching tasks, it’s only fair that they be given salaries similar to what other teachers currently receive, unlike DepEd’s proposal to pay para-teachers a measly P6,000–P11,000. This will also give them a head start in public schools that can be their edge for regularization upon meeting the minimum requirements,” Basilio added.
He furthered that the amount needed is highly realizable with proper budget prioritization, and can be a start at improving the quality of education in the country. Furthermore, this is a step towards achieving Usec. Mateo’s pronouncement of cutting down classes to 20 students each which will entail at least the doubling of DepEd’s present teaching workforce.
Presently, DepEd has yet to fill 34,000 teaching positions and continues to request for 70,000 more. ACT asserted that it will be beneficial to all involved if the additional teaching personnel who will be hired for this school year will be prioritized in the filling up of said items.
REDUCING TEACHERS’ WORKLOAD in the New Normal
Reviewed by Teachers Click
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October 01, 2020
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Reviewed by Teachers Click
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October 01, 2020
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