As the school year progresses, the Department of Education (DepEd) was urged to address the challenges faced by schools, teachers, and learners as soon as possible to avoid “more problems” later on.

For the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC), DepEd should prioritize the building of classrooms and hiring of teachers for the fiscal year 2023.

TDC Chairperson Benjo Basas, in a statement on Wednesday, Sept. 7, said that these are the “two main obstacles” to the country's goal of safe schooling amidst the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

“We have seen in the first three weeks of the school year that our schools are really problematic,” Basas said in a mix of English and Filipino.

Basas, who is also a teacher at Caloocan High School, said that there are schools that lack classrooms. In some cases, even if the number of the classroom is sufficient, there are no teachers to handle classes.

TDC also reacted to the proposed DepEd budget where the agency only allowed for the construction of 2,379 classrooms which is much lower than the 91, 000 shortage estimated by the agency last month.

If the classroom construction is not given a budget, Basas warned that the same problems will persist in the years to come.

Meanwhile, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), in a separate statement issued Sept. 4, also pointed out the “problems” encountered by schools, teachers, and learners since the SY 2022-2023 started.

ACT Chairperson Vladimer Quetua said that teachers are handling seven up to nine classes from the previous six teaching loads.

In the National Capital Region (NCR), he noted that giving ancillary duties to teachers was prohibited to max out the teaching loads that can be given to teachers.

“However, no non-teaching personnel were hired so teachers still perform the ancillary duties but these were not properly credited as their workloads,” Quetua said.

In Bicol, for instance, Quetua alleged that asynchronous classes “were not counted as teaching hours of teachers to make it appear that teachers are underloaded and more work can be given to them.”

Quetua also pointed out that the past two weeks have been used up on orientation meetings as there is “no clear guide” on how teachers can jumpstart their lessons given that there is “wide learning “ that needs to be addressed.

“No learning assessments especially designed for our current situation were developed so teachers just improvise any diagnostic test that they can come up with,” Quetua said.

He added that teachers also report that learners are generally quiet and withdrawn in face-to-face classes --- with some incidents of learners “experiencing anxiety attacks” during classes as they are having a hard time adjusting to their new situation.

Quetua also noted that psychosocial activities, as pointed out by DepEd, are not enough to address these problems.

“Two weeks after and we are still waiting for game-changing measures that the current administration can commit to and implement to alleviate our learners and teachers of our dire situation,” he added.