MANILA, Philippines - Public school teachers will be deployed based on student-teacher ratio under new guidelines of the Department of Education (DepEd).
Education Secretary Armin Luistro said DepEd Memorandum No. 22, series of 2013 allows the reassignment of teachers to other public schools.
“We need to be able to transfer teachers from one station to another to address the problem of overcrowding (of students),†he said.
“Overcrowding (of students) isn’t just because of lack of teachers overall. In certain areas there are more than enough personnel but they are concentrated in a few schools.â€
The DepEd’s Basic Education Information System shows an imbalance in the distribution of teachers: some schools have a less than 40 to 1 ratio as many schools have more than 40 students per teacher.
The DepEd intends to hire 61,000 new public school teachers this year to put an end to the perennial teacher shortage.
In 2012, DepEd reported a shortage of about 47,000 teachers in public elementary schools nationwide.