A group of non-teaching personnel thanked the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) for approving the 10,000 non-teaching positions for the coming school year.

"It’s very important to have more non-teaching positions because the teachers’ administrative tasks were immediately transferred to non-teaching personnel," lawyer Domingo Alidon, president of the Department of Education-National Employees Union, said in a mix of English and Filipino during an interview on Saturday.

Alidon has raised concerns over the lack of non-teaching personnel, with 42,000 schools nationwide.

"If we truly want quality public service, we should increase the number of non-teaching personnel to handle those auxiliary functions across the entire country," Alidon said.

"We appreciate the move of Secretary Sonny Angara for recommending this. Thank you as well to the national government for approving it.," he added.

Alidon noted that non-teaching personnel are doing multi-tasking jobs at the school level.

He also called on the government to hire more medical personnel, admin officers, accountants, most especially lawyers so that the superintendents and principals can really perform their educational tasks and functions.

"All division offices should have lawyers. What’s happening now is that our superintendents, instead of focusing on educational management, get distracted by having to respond to legal issues, sometimes even complaints," Alidon said.

"Under the current rationalization plan, smaller school division offices don’t have lawyers. Hopefully, every division office can have its own legal unit.," he added.

DBM has also approved 16,000 new teaching positions for school year 2025-2026.