Group of teachers welcomes new school year with dismay

CEBU, Philippines — The Alliance of Concerned Teachers Region VII (ACT VII) has recently welcomed the new school year with dismay and vigilance as they claimed that the education crisis continues to worsen under the Marcos Jr. administration.

“Department of Education Secretary and Vice President Sara Duterte claims that the country is prepared for the new school year. However, this has not been the case on ground where teachers remain overworked and underpaid,” said ACT-VII.

ACT-VII president Christopher Abrajano said with the increasing prices of goods and services, the entry salary of Teacher 1, which is P27,000 is not enough to sustain their family needs.

He said even the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) claimed that a family of five needs P42,000 a month to survive above the poverty line.

“Teachers have been shelling out money from their own pockets to provide the learning needs of their students. We receive little to no incentives despite our overtimes and sacrifices in our profession. Just like the Performance Based Bonus for 2021, it has only been recently disbursed due to the lack of urgency provided by DepEd,” said Abrajano, in a statement.

He said that even with the existence of annual allowances, teachers have received less of what they deserve and need, such as the case of the rice allowances where teachers received inedible sacks of rice.

ACT-VII added that these problems are concrete manifestations of the unpreparedness of the country, especially with the national government and DepEd as its education agency.

“Its prioritization is directed on the provision of confidential funds instead of the needs of the whole education sector. A total of 150 Million Pesos has been allocated by DepEd Secretary Sara Duterte to the confidential funds, which is susceptible to corruption as expenditures under this budget do not need reports for transparency and accountability,” it added.

ACT-VII regional vice president for senior high Jerry Almojallas, for his part, said that in Central Visayas there are limited items provided for the security of tenure among public school teachers.

He said that there is a significant gap and mismatch between the number of teachers, especially in the Junior and Senior High School level, and with the number of enrollees and available facilities.

“We have also received reports from fellow teachers that there are also several faulty comfort rooms. Overcrowded classrooms alongside the lack of budget surely affects the quality of teaching in general,” Almojallas said.

He said that the confidential budget could have been allocated to the construction of the lacking 159,000 classrooms nationwide. Particularly in the region, wherein about 60 students occupy a classroom supposedly built to cater 30 students only.

He added that if only a budget was provided for the acquisition of 4.5 million textbooks, about 4,286 laptops worth P35,000 and 250,000 public school uniforms, millions of students could have benefited.

ACT-VII also demanded the DepEd, Marcos Jr., and Duterte to go beyond dramatically painting armchairs.

“We demand our leaders to take full responsibility for being accomplices to the continued oppression of teachers in our country. In this new school year, the Union hopes to ignite the genuine spirit of unionism among teachers that is militant, progressive, and nationalist formation of educators and education personnel,” it further said. — (FREEMAN)