AT least 10,000 public-school teachers and 5,000 nonteaching personnel will be hired by the Department of Education (DepEd) under its proposed 2020 budget, Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones announced on Monday.
“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 delivery of quality education,” Briones said.
Briones added that the move is part of DepEd’s commitment to further improve teacher-to-student ratio, enhance learning and ease the workload of its personnel given increasing enrollment levels in public schools nationwide.
To finance personnel recruitment, DepEd is allocating P1.28 billion for the creation of 5,000 new nonteaching positions and P1.27 billion for the hiring of 10,000 teachers next year.
The new hires will be assigned to different field offices and schools.
The hiring of more teachers is meant to further improve the teacher-to-student ratio.
In 2016, DepEd lowered the teacher-to-student ratio to 1:35 for elementary and 1:43 for secondary schools to enable teachers to better respond to the learning needs of their students.
With enrollment in public schools increasing every year, Briones said that it will achieve the optimum teacher-to-student ratio and will ensure quality teaching and learning in class.
The DepEd chief said teachers will, likewise, benefit from the doubling of the budget for DepEd’s Computerization Program (DCP).
In 2020, DCP will receive P8.99 billion, covering 4,300 e-classroom packages and 42,010 multimedia packages for schools.
The packages will help teachers in enhancing delivery of learning in the classrooms. This is a 105.4-percent increase from DCP’s P4.38-billion budget in 2019.
The DCP is aimed at providing the appropriate technologies to all public schools to enhance the teaching-learning process and 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 department.
“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 stressed.
In September last year, DepEd committed to improve the working condition of teachers through a review of its policies on teachers’ workload.
The initial solution of asking the Department of Budget and Management to greenlight the creation of nonteaching positions in schools was based on the study conducted by DepEd about the type and amount of ancillary tasks being undertaken by teachers.
