A member of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines justified their move to file teachers’ salary upgrading petition before the House Committee on Appropriations and Majority and Minority leaderships on Tuesday, Oct. 4.
Public school teachers and leaders of ACT, along with ACT Partylist Representative France Castro, filed a teachers’ salary upgrading petition on Tuesday. Signed by over 57,000 teachers, the petition seeks to increase the entry-level salary of public school teachers from Salary Grade (SG) 11 or a monthly pay of P25,439 to SG 15 or P35,097.
If the government grants the petition, the wages of college instructors will likewise increase from P27,608 to a monthly pay of P38,150. Private school teachers, on the other hand, will have a minimum salary of P30,000 per month.
“Yung sweldo ay hindi naman napupunta nang buo sa mga teachers. Doon na rin namin kinukuha ‘yung pambili ng mga supplies, minsan pinapakain namin ‘yung mga estudyante na gutom sa klase, minsan ay pati pagpapaayos ng sariling classrooms ay napipilitang dumukot sa sariling bulsa ang mga guro (The salary does not go entirely to the teachers. Using this, we also buy school supplies, sometimes we also feed students who are hungry in class, or sometimes the teachers are forced to pick money from their own pockets in order to fix their own classrooms),” said ACT Secretary General Raymond Basilio in an interview over DZBB on Tuesday evening, Oct. 4
Basilio added that they have been asking for a wage increase for years now, adding that among all the professionals in the Philippine government, only the educators were left with a salary under SG 11.
“Qualified professional... bakit kami naiwan sa SG 11? Talagang hirap. Hirap sa buhay ang ating mga guro (Qualified and professional... but why were we left in SG 11? It is really hard. Our teachers are really having a hard time in life),” Basilio added.
The group then added that the Department of Education (DepED) already stated that “this is not in their plans,” pushing them to seek the help of lawmakers instead.
As stated in their petition, ACT believes that the low level of teachers’ salaries has been “bogging the education system down,” stressing that they no longer find it surprising when many Filipino teachers are forced to “find other sources of income” to make ends meet.