Members of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT Partylist) in Central Visayas made the call during a protest rally at the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu campus on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022, during the celebration of World Teachers’ Day.
Antonia Maamo-Lim, president of ACT Region 7, said they asked the national government to allocate a higher budget to improve the education system and increase the salary of teachers.
She stressed that DepEd still did not pay the teachers’ overtime pay last school year, 2020-2021, for letting them work for 297 days or 77 more days than the 220 maximum number of school days in a school year mandated under the Republic Act (RA) 7797.
Lim added that teachers also worked for additional three weeks for the school year 2021-2022 and used their leave credits in serving during the enrollment and the Brigada Eskwela.
Lim also emphasized the scarcity of resources of teachers to sustain blended learning (online and face-to-face learning), stating that most teachers spent their own money for teaching resources such as laptops and internet connection, hand washing items for the students for them to be protected from Covid-19 infections.
The teacher group suggested upgrading the entry pay rate of public school educators to a salary grade 15, or P35,097 from P25,439, teaching personnel in higher education to a salary grade 16, or P38,150 from P27,608, and making P30,000 the entry-level salary of private school teachers under House Bill 203 they filed in Congress this month through ACT Teachers partylist Rep. France Castro.
Well-compensated
But DepEd Central Visayas director Salustiano Jimenez assured that they are continuously working to ensure that public school teachers are well compensated while balancing tedious work.
Though he does not deny the ACT Partylist’s claims that teachers are often overworked, Jimenez said it is part of the rigors of the job.
“Teaching is not considered as a profession, but more of a vocation. My experience back when I was teaching was worst as we have to do everything on our end manually, such as lesson plans, unlike now,” Jimenez told SunStar Cebu.
Jimenez said that DepEd 7 alone have continuously made programs to ease the burden of teachers and make sure that they focus on “instruction delivery,” among everything else.
He said that some of the measures they have implemented to ease the burden of their teachers was to forego the need to prepare lesson plans as they are given “prototype lesson plans” for all grades starting Kinder to Grade 12.
DepEd also has a learning portal where teachers can search all available lesson plans that they can just print right away. Even school principals are given a manual of instructional supervision as their guidance in observing classes, Jimenez added.
Jimenez also said they had mandated schools to store instructional materials such as lectures, readings, textbooks, and other multimedia components in a resource center where teachers can just utilize them whenever they need them.
He further said that some teachers often make their own teaching resources in their initiative and reiterated that DepEd had reimbursed their expenses through its Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses.
Jimenez said they plan to ask their superintendents to coordinate with their local government units (LGUs) and hire someone who can make and reproduce standard instructional materials.
With regards to teachers’ salary increase mulled in Congress, Jimenez cited RA 11466 or the Salary Standardization Law of 2019 among their other programs increasing teachers’ pay grades as enough.
Under RA 11466, teachers’ pay grades increase by at least P1,500 given in four tranches that started in 2020 and will end in 2023.
That makes teacher 1 having a salary of P25,439, become P27,000 in 2023, among other ranks, said Jimenez.
“Come to think of it, teachers are earning beyond the minimum wage (P435 per day). Whose more pitiful are those earning the minimum and managing to survive from it day by day,” added Jimenez.
Jimenez also cited the DepEd’s step increment program, increasing teachers’ salaries by up to P5,000 every three years for teachers who could maintain satisfactory performance, regardless if they are promoted or not.
For private schools, Jimenez cited that the salary increase of their teachers is within the discretion of their management, emphasizing that some small-time private schools do not have enough funds to increase the salaries of their teachers.
“I know the government is looking for what’s best for the teachers. As much as we want to provide all their (teachers) needs instantly but there is a procurement process. We need to balance within our needs and how we are able to do it in the right way, said Jimenez.