A party-list lawmaker on Saturday urged the Department of Education to fill up tens of thousands of vacant teaching and non-teaching positions in public schools.
“The DepEd should perhaps hold a jobs fair to recruit needed personnel, mostly teachers,” Anakalusugan party-list Rep. Michael Defensor said.
Based on the government’s staffing summary for 2020, the public school system has a total of 966,159 permanent positions, of which 907,133 are filled.
“This means that DepEd has 59,026 in vacant posts, mostly for teachers. That is not counting the thousands in additional teaching and non-teaching jobs funded under the P4.1-trillion national budget for this year,” he said.
Defensor said the huge number of vacancies means a larger student-teacher ratio or more students in a class.
“We are sacrificing the education of our children by lumping more students in a class because we lack teaching and non-teaching personnel,” he said.
He added that such lack also results in teachers having to do non-teaching and administrative chores.
Defensor urged qualified education graduates to seek jobs in public schools.
“I am sure that the compensation in the public school system is higher than that in private schools. This is the reason why many private school teachers are migrating to the public education sector,” he said.
He said the entry-level basic monthly salary for teachers under the Salary Standardization Law 5 is P22,316. That amount does not include allowances, he said.
Defensor said the DepEd has to hire personnel to fill vacancies “because those jobs are already funded in the national budget.”
Defensor called on other government agencies as well to recruit needed employees.
“Bureaucracy-wide, there are 190,048 vacant positions. The government, the country’s biggest employer, will be reducing the unemployment rate if it is able to fill those vacancies,” he said.