A teachers’ group on Monday said the government’s defense of its controversial distribution of voice amplifiers to public school teachers highlighted the slow pace of delivering more substantial support, including a long-promised laptop program that remains incomplete.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines said DepEd’s assurance that laptops are still being procured showed a lack of urgency in delivering one of the most frequently cited forms of support for teachers, many of whom continue to shoulder digital and administrative workloads using their own resources.

“During last year’s SoNA, laptops were promised, but what arrived was paperwork and, according to our fellow teachers, low-quality equipment that quickly broke down. Perhaps this is what a ‘Failed Philippines’ truly is — failing to fulfill its promise of adequate support for teachers while also failing to provide decent, living wages,” ACT chairperson Ruby Bernardo said.

DepEd earlier said the laptop procurement requires a lengthier process because the agency must ensure the devices meet standards for performance, durability, battery life and warranty coverage.

It also defended the voice amplifier project, saying competitive bidding reduced the unit price from an approved ceiling of P480.76 to about P300 to P370 per unit.

Workload woes

For ACT, however, the larger issue is not the device itself but the conditions that make such equipment necessary.

“Instead of easing teachers’ burden through smaller class sizes, more classrooms and additional teaching personnel, the government has resorted to temporary measures while many schools, particularly in urban centers, continue to hold classes of 40 to more than 50 learners,” Bernardo said.

ACT also questioned the scale of the laptop program, arguing that the planned procurement of more than 250,000 laptops would cover only a portion of the country’s public school teachers.

The group said reports from teachers indicated that some voice amplifiers distributed under the program produced weak audio output or malfunctioned shortly after use. ACT argued that the agency’s emphasis on lowering costs through competitive bidding may have compromised product quality.

ACT renewed its call for the government to provide a quality laptop for every public school teacher, increase education spending to at least 6 percent of gross domestic product, hire more teachers and support personnel, and construct additional classrooms to reduce class sizes.