DepEd allots 2,490 teaching positions to Mindanao

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines  — The worsening shortage of public school teachers in Mindanao has been eased after the Department of Education (DepEd) allocated a total of 2,490 teaching items for school year 2011-2012 for the country’s second largest island region, it was learned here recently.

DepEd region 10 director Luz Almeda said the teaching posts — 627 for elementary and 1,863 for secondary — were part of the 10,000 teaching positions released earlier by the agency to answer the long-felt need for more basic education mentors in Mindanao’s 63 provincial and city schools divisions.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro directed DepEd regional directors to authorize local schools division superintendents to fill up the new tutor items in their respective areas following strictly the agency’s ranking and merit system, and the government’s Localization Law, even as he stressed that the recruitment of high school teachers shall be based on the applicants’ major or minor subjects needed by the schools where they are to be deployed, Almeda said.

Luistro also enjoined schools superintendents to assign the newly recruited teachers to schools with big enrolments to reduce overcrowding of classes as well as to remote elementary schools with multi-grade classes handled by only one or two teachers.

Almeda noted that of the six regions in the Southern Philippines, Central Mindanao (Region 12), originally composed of the provinces and cities of the old Cotabato empire province, was given the biggest number of teachers with 533 followed by Northern Mindanao (Region 10) with 414 .

The other southern regions and their respective allocations of teaching items, Almeda said, are Southern Mindanao (Region 11), 407; Western Mindanao (also called Zamboanga Peninsula), 394; Caraga (Region 13), 272, and Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), 361.

Almeda added that among Mindanao’s 63 schools divisions, North Cotabato received the most number of teaching posts with 138 followed by Davao City, 137; Zamboanga del Norte, 136; Sarangani, 133; Misamis Oriental, 97; Agusan del Sur, 97; Zamboanga del Sur, 96; Bukidnon, 90; General Santos City, 83; Lanao del Sur l-A, 76, and Sultan Kudarat, 75.