Senator Sherwin Gatchalian on Tuesday, October 25 renewed his call for long-term solutions addressing the heavy workload of teachers.
Gatchalian, who heads the Senate Committee on Basic Education, made the call as the Department of Education (DepEd) is set to release a “workload balancing tool” to address teachers’ workload issues.
Gatchalian said long-term solutions should include digitalization and the hiring of enough non-teaching personnel in schools.
The senator has been urging the DepEd to adopt a proposal from the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) to conduct studies on teacher workload, which will help rationalize their job and allow them to allocate more time for teaching.
“Isa sa mga hakbang upang maingat natin ang kalidad ng edukasyon na natatanggap ng ating mga kabataan ay tiyaking may sapat na panahon ang ating mga guro sa pagtuturo (One of the steps we can take to level up the quality of education that our young people receive is to make sure that our teachers have enough time to teach),” Gatchalian said in a statement.
“Ngunit hindi natin ito magagawa, kung nananatiling pasanin ng mga guro ang iba pang mga gawain na wala namang kinalaman sa aktwal na pagtuturo (But we cannot do this, if teachers remain burdened with other tasks that have nothing to do with actual teaching),” he said.
PIDS, in 2019, warned that the quality and delivery of education is affected by the teachers’ administrative and student support roles, as well as their participation in government programs like mass immunization, deworming, and election.
To help streamline teachers' workflow and processes, including the creation of lesson plans and the filing of reports, the lawmaker said it is high time to also accelerate digital transformation in the basic education sector.
Gatchalian has filed the Digital Transformation in Basic Education Act, or Senate Bill No. 383, to promote efficiency in delivering basic education services.
He has also called on the administration to fully implement the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers or Republic Act No. 4670.
During the 18th Congress, a Senate panel review of the Magna Carta revealed that DepEd is non-compliant with three sections of the law: the provisions on medical examination and treatment, salary increase upon retirement, and the submission of the annual budgetary requirement to implement the law.
The Magna Carta provides that public school teachers required in actual classroom instruction should not render more than six hours of actual classroom teaching in a day.
Because of this, Gatchalian said he plans to seek amendments to the Magna Carta, since the 56-year-old law should now be more responsive to present challenges that teachers face.