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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider National devider 'More teachers, reduced class sizes' needed for safe school reopening

'More teachers, reduced class sizes' needed for safe school reopening

Published Jul 11, 2022 04:19 pm

To address the shortage of teachers and reduce the class size to 35 students which would enable safe school reopening next school year, the Department of Education (DepEd) needs to hire more teachers.

(NOEL PABALATE / MANILA BULLETIN)

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines, in a statement issued Monday, June 11, underscored the need for DepEd to hire more teachers as the government eyes the full implementation of face-to-face classes by November this year.

“The snail-paced sluggishness of the DepEd to hire teachers has become a perennial problem,” ACT Philippines Chairperson Vladimer Quetua said.

ACT noted that as of February 2021, there “were more than 26,000 unfilled teaching items” in the DepEd while there is a provision in the 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA) for 10,000 new teaching items.

From 2016 to 2020, Quetua said that there were yearly additional 1,500 to 2,500 net unfilled items under the DepEd vis-a-vis the newly created items per year. “That is why they have a bloated backlog in hiring teachers,” he added.

Quetua underscored the importance of reducing class size to ensure safe school reopening amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The reduction of class size is very important for safety and to ensure the quality of education of our students especially now that we are striving to address the learning gaps due to the more than two years of school closure,” he said.

Teacher shortage, Quetua explained, is “most felt in urban areas” where class size can reach up to 60 to 70 students.

He added that such is a “recipe for disaster” under the pandemic situation since there is no way that teachers can ensure learning quality in such a set-up.

“Again we are calling on the DepEd to fast-track their hiring of teachers before school opening to somehow relieve our educational system of overcrowded classrooms,” Quetua said.

While the budget has already been allotted for this so it is not an additional expense, he noted that Congress must also “allot sufficient funds” in the 2023 budget for the creation of more teaching items.

This, he added, will help to effectively reduce the class size to a maximum of 35 students per class.

Related Tags

deped FACE-TO-FACE CLASSES covid-19 teachers Alliance of Concerned Teachers
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