The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines, the largest organization of teachers’ unions and associations in the country, led a day of protest Tuesday to register their five World Teachers’ Day (WTD) demands for decent pay, benefits, and support amid the health crises.
This developed as the country’s over 900,000 public school teachers are expected to receive their P1,000 World Teachers’ Day Incentive Benefit without any delay, Makati City Rep. Luis Campos Jr. said on Tuesday.
In the Senate, Senator Imee Marcos said more than a year of joblessness awaits this year’s education graduates who cannot take the Licensure Examinations for Professional Teachers (LEPT) until 2023 due to pandemic restrictions.
“As teachers remain overworked, underpaid, and undersupported by the Duterte administration, we are challenged yet again to take action and utilize our collective strength to forward the interests of our sector,” ACT Secretary General Raymond Basilio said in a statement.
“We shall exhaust all available measures, exercise our constitutionally protected rights and freedoms to better the conditions of millions of educators in the country and the state of Philippine education—not only for our benefit, but for the entire nation whom we continue to serve,” Basilio added.
ACT’s five WTD Demands include: 1) Salary upgrading; 2) Overtime compensation; 3) Support for teachers and learners in the form of laptops and P1,500 monthly internet allowance for teachers, and gadgets and P10,000 pandemic aid for students; 4) P3,000 inflation adjustment allowance; and 5) P10,000 tax-exempt election service honorarium.
In the House of Representatives, Campos said the P910 million meant to pay for the WTDIB of public school teachers “is itemized and fully funded in this year’s General Appropriations Act.”
“In fact, we’ve also earmarked another P925 million to pay for the WTDIB in the 2022 national budget,” said the House appropriations committee vice chairperson.
“We expect a greater number of newly hired teachers to receive the benefit next year, thus the bigger funding,” Campos said.
Campos co-sponsored the DepEd budget during plenary deliberations on the proposed P5.024-trillion General Appropriations Act of 2022.
Speaking out on World Teachers’ Day, Marcos called it “utterly inexcusable” that the Civil Service Commission (CSC) has not yet shifted from an in-person to an online mode of conducting the LEPT after a year and a half into the pandemic.
Marcos, who will defend the CSC’s 2022 budget before the Senate, cited that some 200,000 government posts including those for public school teachers remain unfilled, adding that an online LEPT would make more applicants eligible for jobs in government-run educational institutions.
“We are delaying job creation and may even be causing a shortage of teachers. The solution is to fully digitize the LEPT to make it pandemic-proof now and in the future,” she said.
“The Career Executive Service Board (CESB) and other professional regulatory boards have succeeded in conducting online exams. Surely, the CSC can modify those templates for the LEPT,” Marcos asserted.
“Let’s not impair our capacity to provide crucial government services, especially in education and public health, during this ongoing crisis,” she added.
Education graduates last year made up most of the 170,000 registered examinees that have been grouped in four smaller batches to observe physical distancing while taking the LEPT.
Last September’s exam was the only one scheduled for this year but will be followed thereafter by exams in January, March, and June of 2022.
However, the registration deadline is over for the exams scheduled next year, so 2021 education graduates as well as previous degree holders who did not sign up will have to wait for their turn in 2023, unless an online LEPT is put in place sooner, Marcos noted.
Oct. 5 is observed every year as World Teachers’ Day. “Teachers at the heart of education recovery” is the theme of this year’s celebration.