The Department of Education is set to launch a workload balancing tool to determine how long teachers spend in classrooms and how long they do their clerical works, according to DepEd spokesperson Michael Poa on Thursday.
"We are about to launch the workload balancing tool to better identify how many contact hours teachers spend in their classrooms and the hours they spend doing administrative works so that we can lessen their tasks," Poa said.
He added that the workload tool will be released within the year.
"Definitely, within the year, it will be released since it is effective to identify what activities our teachers are doing on the ground so that we can lessen their administrative tasks," Poa said.
He also acknowledged the workload of teachers, saying it was one of the reasons why DepEd has asked for additional budget to hire 10,000 new teachers for next year.
"Of course, we will lessen or reduce the contact hours of teachers. We admit that we still have a shortage of teachers that's why we reiterated on the last week of August the hiring and filling up of the existing teaching items," said Poa.
The Education department earlier said it is looking at lessening the administrative tasks of teachers so that they can focus their time on teaching, especially since they have to close the learning gaps caused by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic where students have to undergo blended learning instead of in-person classes.
To recall, the Teachers' Dignity Coalition earlier said that some teachers are handling excessive workloads and longer hours of teaching compared to the pre-pandemic situation.
The group also urged the Education department to remind school heads of the policy on working hours, saying they continue to receive reports from the field that some of them are being required to render teaching tasks for more than six hours or stay and work in the school beyond eight hours.
Benjo Basas, the group's chairperson, said that aside from teaching tasks, teachers are also overwhelmed by administrative tasks.
