Angara, who had spent 12 years in the Senate fighting for education issues, said there is a pressing need to upgrade the salaries of public schools teachers to give them decent lives. The present pay scale has to catch up with the present cost of living and other economic variable, he said.
Angara was also instrumental in the original effort to double the pay of public school teachers in the early ’90s.
There are around P450,000 teachers in public elementary and high schools in the country that will benefit from the proposed initiative of Angara.
"The public school teachers need an urgent economic relief. This can be done via a modest increase in the basic pay," said Angara.
Angara said the basic pay for public school teachers is now Salary Grade 10, or a little above P10,000. To adjust the basic pay to P15,000, the legislation should set the basic pay at Salary Grade 18, or an eight-step jump, according to Angara.
Angara, during his Senate years, was often "Mr. Education" for championing the welfare of teachers and public and private education.
He was the main proponent of the Free High School Act, that mandates free secondary education. Before the passage of that law, only elementary education was free.
He was the main sponsor of the measures that created the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).
The two laws stripped the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) of unnecessary burden, enabling the DECS to focus on the needs of basic education.
Angara was also the principal sponsor of the measure that is now the Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education (or GASTPE).
In 1992, he headed a congressional commission that wrote the landmark report on the problems of Philippine education.