“There is indeed a need to increase the entry level salary of public-school teachers which is Grade 11 or approximately P30,000”
LAST Monday was National Teachers Day and to celebrate the occasion, the Office of the President appropriated about P955,000,000 to give the estimated 950,000 public school teachers P1,000 each as a cash incentive.
If we add about P18,500 every month for each of the teachers to make their base salary P50,000 as some advocates have recently demanded, the total will be so staggering that the government cannot obviously afford.
But to be fair, there is indeed a need to increase the entry level salary of public school teachers which is Grade 11 or approximately P30,000 and should be done faster.
The current salary standardization law does provide increases but at a much slower pace which cannot keep up with inflation.
How this problem will be navigated by the government to improve teachers’ morale and thus improve education in general considering the limited financial capability of the government is a little complicated.
If the problem was just about pay, perhaps the easiest way is to solve it is to eliminate the pork barrel funds of our lawmakers and give them to our teachers thereby hitting two birds with one stone.
We reduce corruption and teacher morale will go sky high.
Unfortunately, there are other problems confronting our educational system that also needs attention. Let’s try to look at these other issues.
There is no denying that educating our youth with quality education is the best and most important investment that any government can make to ensure that the future of the country will be in good hands.
Unfortunately however, from being the educational leader in the region, the quality of our education has fallen behind our neighbors over the years.
Proof of this is that our students are always placing near the bottom every time they participate in internationally supervised tests for math, science and reading.
This does not include the deterioration in the way Filipinos speak the English language which has also worsened.
Although our so-called educational leaders and officials have realized the problem for some time, most of the reform programs undertaken have not done the job and even made the problems worse.
For one, there seems to be no consensus on the best approach resulting in constant modifications of what has been started every time there is a new administration resulting in further weakening.
One of the constant refrains coming from education reformers is the low pay for teachers resulting in many of our good teachers leaving for greener pastures to higher paying countries. There is unfortunately some truth to this statement but money cannot be the only reason because there are other reasons why our quality of education has gone down.
Even if the government will suddenly start paying teachers P50,000 as basic monthly pay, the quality of our education will not immediately improve.
This is because of the nature of the existing problems require longer term solutions.
School curriculum, what medium of instruction to use, and the upgrading of the quality of our entry level teachers which the DepEd has always avoided discussing all need longer to improve.
All that can be said about all the efforts of our education leaders is that so far, all their efforts have so far failed to achieve the results that everyone wants.
On the issue about the overall quality of our entry level teachers which the DepEd has always tried to avoid talking about, not much has been accomplished. Instead of dodging the subject, DepEd should simply try developing a program that will eventually improve their quality.
One such program is offering thousands of selected high school graduates who have the inclination of wanting to become teachers free education by sending them to our top universities to become teachers.
Lessening the work load of our overworked teachers by no longer requiring them to perform other non-teaching duties plus the creation of teacher assistant positions will also go a long way in improving our quality of education.
Understandably however, the high cost of living is always the top priority of our teachers and other government employees similarly situated. There are laws on salary increases but too slow to implement and when it comes, inflation has already eaten up the increase.
The best solution? Index the increase to inflation.
