DepEd to hire 10,000 teachers next year

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education (DepEd) will hire 10,000 public school teachers and 5,000 non-teaching personnel using its funding of more than P500 billion for 2020.

The move is part of DepEd’s commitment to further improve teacher-to-student ratio, enhance learning and ease the workload of its personnel, given increasing enrollment levels in public schools nationwide.

Education Secretary Leonor Briones said the hiring of 10,000 educators, budgeted with P1.27 billion, would ensure there will be teachers manning the classrooms that the agency will build as it pursues its school building program and attain better teacher-to-student and classroom-to-student ratios and foster a more conducive learning environment in public schools.

“More than being part of our 10-point agenda, we want to stay true to our word that the department is relentless in finding ways to enhance personnel welfare, while at the same time improving the delivery of quality education,” Briones said at a press briefing to discuss the 2020 National Expenditure Plan (NEP) of the DepEd yesterday.

It was learned that the 2020 NEP comes up to a whopping P550.9 billion, up by more than P20 billion from the department’s P530.23 billion in the General Appropriations Act of 2019.

Meanwhile, DepEd is allocating P1.28 billion for the creation of 5,000 new non-teaching positions. The new hires will be assigned to various field offices and schools.

Teachers will likewise benefit from the doubling of the budget for the DepEd Computerization Program (DCP).

In 2020, the DCP will receive P8.99 billion covering 4,300 e-classroom packages and 42,010 multimedia packages for schools. The packages will aid teachers in enhancing the delivery of learning in the classrooms. This is a 105.4-percent increase from the DCP’s P4.38-billion budget for this year.

The DCP is aimed at providing the appropriate technologies to all public schools to enhance the teaching-learning process and to enable both teachers and learners to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It also provides relevant information technology structures, networking facilities and information systems to all levels of governance of the department.

“We recognize the need to provide our teaching and non-teaching personnel with work conditions that will enable them to deliver quality basic education for all. Steadily, we’re ensuring that they are unburdened of ancillary tasks and equipped with necessary tools and materials to develop lifelong Filipino learners,” Briones said.

In September last year, the DepEd committed to improve the working condition of teachers through a review of its policies on teachers’ workload. The initial solution of requesting the Department of Budget and Management to create non-teaching positions in schools was based on the study conducted by DepEd about the type and amount of ancillary tasks being undertaken by teachers.

In 2016, DepEd lowered the teacher-to-student ratio to 1:35 for elementary and 1:43 for secondary schools to enable teachers to better respond to the varying learning needs of their students. With enrollment in public schools increasing every year, achieving the optimum teacher to student ratio will ensure quality teaching and learning in class.