CEBU, Philippines - The Department of Education (DepEd) - 7 disclosed that there are new classrooms currently being constructed and new teachers will be added for Central Visayas.
Carmelita Dulangon, DepEd-7 director, said during the recent Kapihan sa PIA forum that for this year, a total of 602 classrooms are targeted for completion.
In an earlier interview with The Freeman Deped-7 information officer Clara Falconi said that they have identified a classroom need of 5,676 for Cebu for this school year.
Falconi said that the need for additional classrooms for Cebu province and cities were included in their Fiscal Year 2013 budget proposal. Of the 5,676 classrooms needed for Cebu, 2,660 are in Cebu Province while the remaining 3,016 classrooms needed are for the cities of Bogo, Carcar, Cebu, Danao, Lapu-lapu, Naga, Mandaue, Talisay and Toledo.
Meanwhile, DepEd reported that 5,653 new teacher items are now open for 2013-2014 school year for kindergarten to secondary levels.
The additional teachers will help DepEd attain their standard teacher-student ratio of 1:45.
"We are trying to reach the ratio of one teacher for 45 students, which is the ideal. So these new teacher items, we will spread them out to reach the ideal ratio," said Dulangon during the forum.
Dulangon said the education department adds more teacher items every year.
Currently there are 44,234 public school teachers handling kindergarten to fourth year high school classes in the region.
Of the total, 39,601 are paid by the national government while 4,633 are paid by local government units. – (FREEMAN)