MANILA, Philippines — Education Secretary and Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio has signed a policy to immediately remove the administrative tasks of public school teachers on Friday.
Duterte signed the Department of Education (DepEd) Order 002, s. 2024, saying that this will enable teachers to maximize their time in actual classroom teaching.
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"Let’s bring our teachers back to the classrooms," said Duterte in a statement released on Saturday.
"To ensure its 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 be providing additional [Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses] to enable our schools to hire the necessary administrative support staff."
A 2019 study by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) earlier cautioned against giving teachers administrative tasks, since it distracts them from their main job as educators.
Included in the administrative tasks removed from teachers are the following:
- personnel administration
- property/physical facilities custodianship
- general administrative support
- financial management
- records management
- feeding
- school disaster risk reduction and management
- other related programs
Public school teachers often engage in activities related to various state programs, extending beyond their primary role in education, such as providing services during elections.
As transitory provision, the policy requires schools division offices (SDOs) to immediately implement clustering strategies and deployment of administrative support personnel to clustered schools.
Alongside this, there is an immediate transfer of current administrative responsibilities from teachers to school heads and non-teaching personnel, coupled with the recruitment of administrative support personnel within a timeframe not exceeding 60 days.
A calamity fund and policy on teaching overload pay for teachers will also be established, DepEd said.
"We want to ensure that our teachers are rightfully compensated for hours of actual classroom teaching beyond the 6-hour limit provided under the Magna Carta for teachers," it added.
'A promise made last year'
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), for their part, scored Duterte's action as "long overdue" since the promise to remove administrative duties have been made in the 2023 Basic Education Report.
"With almost 50,000 schools suffering from being understaffed, we need at least 2 administrative staff per school to truly unload the teachers from being overworked," said ACT in a statement.
"The allocation of 10,000 administrative staff positions nationwide appears exaggerated in terms of its potential to relieve teachers of administrative duties," it added.
ACT also criticized the DepEd secretary for not reporting their failures, with two out of three school buildings currently in bad shape.
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) earlier junked the petition of over 60,000 public school teachers to approve a 36% increase in the salaries of entry-level teachers and college instructors.
The World Bank is currently studying teachers' salaries in the country and its findings will be submitted to Duterte's office.