Senator Win Gatchalian raised the need to expedite the Department of Education’s (DepEd) hiring process to fill all vacant positions.
Its hiring of teachers can take up to six months, involving other agencies such as the Civil Service Commission and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), according to Gatchalian.
As of May 24, 2024, there are 46,703 unfilled positions in DepEd, 26,984 of which are teaching positions.
The education agency, however plans to create 20,000 new teaching positions next year.
While the National Expenditure Program (NEP) allocates P5.50 billion for these new posts, the DepEd said it is short of 56,050 teachers, a need requiring P15.4 billion.
“The number of teachers we need continues to grow with our student population, and filling the 26,000 vacant positions would help address the teacher shortage,” the senator said during the Committee on Finance’s hearing on DepEd’s proposed 2025 budget.
Gatchalian stressed that DepEd must also hire administrative officers to reduce the non-teaching workload of teachers.
The Second Congressional Commission on Education, in its Year One report, noted that public school teachers are burdened with over 50 administrative and ancillary tasks.
To recall, DepEd Order No. 02 s. 2024 ordered the immediate removal of administrative tasks from public school teachers.
“I’m very pleased that next year, we will be hiring 10,000 administrative officers considering that we have about 43,000 schools, so that’s about a fourth of our schools having administrative officers,” the solon from Valenzuela said.
The NEP allocates P3.43 billion for the hiring of non-teaching positions. But, the DepEd needs 20,668 non-teaching personnel, a requirement that cost P7.9 billion.IMT
