Public schools budget hike sought

A prominent teachers’ union said Thursday that the government’s approval of more than 32,000 new teaching positions for the 2026–2027 school year is a welcome development but remains insufficient to address the country’s chronic teacher shortage.

Alliance of Concerned Teachers Philippines chairperson Ruby Bernardo said the newly approved positions fall far short of the estimated 145,000-teacher gap cited in findings by the Second Congressional Commission on Education.

Bernardo noted that EDCOM II previously reported that from 2022 to 2023, only 3,415 of 46,000 unfilled teaching positions were successfully filled. This indicates that even the annual target of hiring 10,000 new teachers in recent years has not been met, worsening the national backlog.

The Department of Education has previously acknowledged that regional hiring bottlenecks, budget limitations, and a lack of applicants in remote areas have slowed recruitment.

Bernardo said the challenge now lies in successfully filling the approved 32,000 new positions this year, adding that the department must sustain this level of hiring annually to resolve the shortage within five years.

According to the union, the lack of personnel has altered teaching conditions nationwide, forcing educators to handle subjects beyond their specialization and take on administrative duties. Bernardo said teachers are also being made to handle programs like ARAL, despite earlier assurances that such responsibilities would not fall on them.

The congressional commission’s report confirmed these conditions, noting that public school teachers routinely manage oversized classes of 45 to 60 students, with some handling multiple grade levels or subjects they were not trained to teach.

Bernardo said quality education cannot be expected when workers are stretched beyond their training, forced into multiple roles, and deprived of adequate support.