The Department of Education (DepED) on Monday, Oct. 17, clarified that it has yet to release the “work balancing tool” developed for teachers.
“The work balancing tool has not been released,” DepED Spokesperson Michael Poa told the Manila Bulletin in a Viber message. “It is still undergoing review and being finalized,” he added.
READ:
https://mb.com.ph/2022/09/15/deped-to-launch-balancing-tool-to-address-workload-issues-of-teachers/
In a separate statement issued Monday, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines hit the DepED’s “work balancing tool” for teachers allegedly issued by the agency and is currently circulating among schools.
ACT claimed that the “work balancing tool” contained in a copy of the new school form 7 indicated that a “teacher who teaches six classes per day and handles an advisory class is still underloaded by 20 minutes in a day.”
The group added that a sample computation was also shown for a 480-minute workday wherein 300 minutes were allotted for six classes of 50 minutes each.
ACT added that based on the said tool, 20 minutes intervals between classes yielded 100 minutes to be spent for teaching-related activities while another 60 minutes was allocated for duties related to class advisorship.
For ACT Spokesperson Roel Mape, class advisorship used to be counted as one teaching load and incorporated into the six-hour daily teaching time of teachers.
“But now they have pulled it our of the teaching hours, thereby consuming a part of our two-hour in a day period which should be allotted for lesson preparations and checking of outputs,” he said.
With this, Mape said that the tool is not a work balancing but an “overloading” tool.
For teachers to be enabled to deliver quality teaching, Mape reiterated that their teaching time should be reduced to four hours per day, the allotted time for lesson preparation and other teaching-related duties should be increased, and they should be spared from non-teaching duties.
RELATED STORY:
https://mb.com.ph/2022/09/18/depeds-promise-of-easing-teachers-workload-just-all-talk-says-group/