A group pushing for the hiring of more teachers and the construction of more classrooms expressed disappointment with the response given by the Department of Education (DepEd) to its demands. In a statement issued Monday, March 27, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines reiterated that its calls “were made to weigh in the voice of our teachers on the current education policies and programs of government.” Last week, ACT urged the DepEd under the leadership of Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte to hire 30,000 yearly until 2028 to eradicate the “shortage of teachers” in public schools. READ: [https://mb.com.ph/2023/3/22/dep-ed-urged-to-hire-30-k-new-teachers-yearly](https://mb.com.ph/2023/3/22/dep-ed-urged-to-hire-30-k-new-teachers-yearly) However, in a statement also issued Monday, Duterte said that the suggestions of ACT to hire 30,000 public teachers and allocate a budget of P100 billion per year for classrooms are “obviously deceptive maneuvers deliberately designed to counter the Marcos administration’s solution to the problems hounding the education sector.” ACT’s call, Duterte said, is motivated by its “fascination for demands and goals that are unrealistic and impossible — placing the government in a precarious situation that will ultimately end in failure.” Duterte also questioned the group’s “true intentions” since the call came at the height of the “NPA-initiated violence in six towns of Masbate that affected over 55,199 learners and 2,815 school personnel.” READ: [https://mb.com.ph/2023/3/27/nice-try-vp-duterte-sees-act-s-demand-for-30-k-new-teachers-a-diversion-from-masbate-clash](https://mb.com.ph/2023/3/27/nice-try-vp-duterte-sees-act-s-demand-for-30-k-new-teachers-a-diversion-from-masbate-clash) As a response, ACT said it was “appalled by the rabidness” Duterte to attack the group even on “perfectly legitimate and logical demands” of hiring 30,000 new teachers and constructing 50,000 new classrooms yearly, until 2028, to eradicate teacher and classroom shortages and improving education quality. “Even more disgusting is her desperate bid to discredit our calls by maliciously connecting our good intentions to the armed conflicts in Masbate province,” ACT said. ACT’s maintained that its demand to significantly increase the usual 5,000 new teachers being hired and 5,000 classrooms being built yearly has been as old as the education shortages in the country. “We have repeatedly raised the call to previous regimes and to the current administration through letters, petitions, budget proposals and dialogues,” the group added. ACT also pointed out that “never has it happened before” that such demands be seen by no less than the education secretary as a ploy to “put the government in a precarious position.” “It has always been the depressing state of education quality and the daily sufferings of hundreds of thousands of our public school teacher-members that prompt ACT to propose meaningful educational reforms,” the group said. ACT also expressed disappointment after Duterte tagged as “unrealistic and impossible” and worse “archaic and ineffective” the proposals to hire more teachers and build more classrooms while she “herself admitted that shortages on such are major roadblocks to education recovery.”