DepEd struggles to fill over 4K vacant guidance counselor positions 

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education can't find enough qualified professionals to fill its 4,400 vacant guidance counselor positions in schools, throwing a wrench in its campaign to address the Philippines' record-high incidence of bullying. 

The latest government data show that there are 4,460 vacancies for guidance counselor positions nationwide as of March 2024, far outnumbering the 251 graduates of Masters in Guidance and Counseling programs from 2018 to 2021. 

These data from the Department of Education (DepEd) and Commission on Higher Education (CHED) were cited in a news release by the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2), a three-year congressional body tasked with identifying gaps in the Philippine education system.

With at least 17 times more vacancies than qualified graduates based on available data, this "poses a big concern regarding the supply of professionals who could help address or provide relevant services on bullying and mental health in schools," EDCOM 2 said.

This is because the guidance and counseling profession's high standards in comparison to its pay have made it an "unappealing" choice for students, said Dexter Galban, DepEd assistant secretary for operations, in a meeting with EDCOM 2.

Entry-level guidance counselors are assigned salary grade 11 (P27,000 per month) despite being required to complete a Master's degree and pass a licensure exam before they can provide guidance and counseling services.

“Probably we have to go beyond the promotion of MA [in Guidance Counselors], because the profession itself is becoming unappealing in light of its current status and salary grade," Galban said. "We need to start from there, alongside the human resources that we need to address the problem."

There are regions with hundreds of vacancies but no single graduate at all during the two school years for which data is available, according to EDCOM 2. 

For instance, in Region 4B (Mimaropa) and Region 8 (Eastern Visayas), there are 164 and 297 vacancies, respectively. But there was no single graduate of guidance and counseling in these two regions from 2018 to 2021.

Meanwhile, in Region 12 (SOCCSKSARGEN), only four graduates were recorded from 2018 to 2021, while latest data shows at least 211 positions are vacant.

Some schools who cannot find a single licensed guidance counselor have been forced to assign the job to teachers, giving them the title of "guidance teacher," as told in a 2018 VERA Files report. 

Assigning teachers to stand in as de-facto guidance counselors who provide students with critical mental health support is against Republic Act 9258 or the Guidance and Counseling Act of 2004, but this law has not been strictly implemented.

Chart by Philstar.com / Cristina Chi

Bullying underreported

Despite the passage of Republic Act 10627 or the Anti-Bullying Act in 2013, bullying incidents in schools have increased almost every year since 2014, according to DepEd data presented by Galban in a Senate hearing last year.

In particular, school year 2018-2019 tallied 21,521 incidents – the highest in a single school year since 2014.  

However, the true number of bullying incidents could be much higher as Galban said that DepEd has observed a "notable difficulty in being able to monitor the number of bullying cases" due to a lack of registered guidance counselors in schools.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, chairperson of the Senate basic education committee, said that DepEd's numbers seem to be far smaller than the results of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which found the Philippines to have the highest percentage of 15 year-old students who reported having been bullied regularly among 79 countries.

PISA results showed that 65% of 15 year-old students in the Philippines are bullied, which, when converted to DepEd' total student population, represents at least 17.5 million students, Gatchalian said. 

Similarly, the 2019 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) also showed that 62% of the country's Grade 5 learners reported experiencing bullying, making the Philippines have the worst bullying problem across all Southeast Asian countries. 

The discrepancy between PISA and DepEd figures on bullying were among the topics discussed during EDCOM 2's discussions on how the department can improve its system for reporting and addressing bullying cases.

On Wednesday, EDCOM 2 convened a technical working group to review the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the Anti-Bullying Act.

“We already have existing policy mechanisms that can provide our learners with a safe and protected environment, and it is our shared responsibility to ensure that these are responsive and well-implemented,”said EDCOM 2 Executive Director Karol Mark Yee.