Education is the most important function of the state because it promotes employment and national economic development, among others. Poor children denied the opportunity of going to school would face insurmountable obstacles to succeed in life. That’s why education has been recognized as a basic human right in a number of international conventions. It works to save the needy and underprivileged members of the community from utter penury by leveling inequalities.
Vice President and concurrent Education Secretary Sara Duterte said in her Basic Education Report 2023: “The lack of school infrastructure and resources to support the ideal teaching process is the most pressing issue pounding the Philippine basic education. Our latest inventory shows we have 327,851 school buildings in the country. Out of these school buildings, only 104,536 are in good condition.”
Stressing the need for an immediate review of the current setup in public schools, Duterte cited the heavy workload that teachers have to bear. “This is a system that burdens them with backbreaking and time-consuming administrative tasks, a system that robs them of the opportunity to professionally grow and professionally teach, assist, and guide our learners,” she said.
A 2019 study of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), Pressures on public school teachers and implications on quality, described how chronically overworked our public school teachers are. The study said under the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers, every public school teacher has a regular full-time teaching load and is mandated to devote a maximum of six hours of actual classroom instruction a day.
“In reality, several additional administrative or student support roles are assigned to each teacher. These include paperwork on seminars and trainings they are tasked to attend and additional designations in line with student guidance, budget, disaster response, and health. Teachers are likewise expected to participate in the implementation of various government programs, such as mass immunizations, community mapping, conditional cash transfer, deworming, feeding, population census, anti-drug, election, among others,” the study said.
The PIDS study added: “While private schools employ administrative staff to do enrollment, registration, records, daily operations, and janitorial services, among others, there is insufficient support and administrative staff, if any, for the teachers in public schools. This means that the teachers are doing the administrative work—a situation that while hidden from view of the normal metrics can erode teaching quality.”
Recognizing the zeal and passion of Filipino teachers, and vowing to champion their welfare and professional development as part of her MATATAG: Bansang Makabata, Batang Makabansa agenda, Duterte said “teachers are critical to the success of education. When they are supported, education quality improves.”
“We will give support to teachers to teach better. We will continuously provide professional development programs, including graduate degree scholarship programs to teachers focusing on their learning area specialization and graduate certificate programs for nonmajors. We will provide support in terms of innovative, responsive, and inclusive teaching approaches following the Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers,” she said.
The Department of Education is taking steps toward education reforms, guided by its mandate and the renewed hope under the Marcos administration, Duterte said. “The current state of basic education behooves us all to take a courageous stand and calls us to work together with the intention and commitment to resolve the challenges in basic education. We fail and we fail our children,” Duterte added.
The DepEd’s focus on giving public school teachers the support they need so they can teach better is a step in the right direction. As children’s author Michael Morpurgo said, “It’s the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.” That’s because a good teacher can awaken interest and energize learning among students, which are essential to academic success.
While it is true that good teachers hold the key to successful learning, it would do well for the government to give due premium to education. There’s an urgent need of quick action to build more classrooms and address the nationwide shortage of teachers. It is no longer uncommon to see teachers handling classes with 60 to 80 students. Studies have shown that an oversized class is one of the main causes of the marked decline in the quality of education provided by the country’s public schools.
