Solon seeks additional pay for kindergarten teachers

A LAWMAKER urged President Aquino to increase to P12,000 the meager monthly salary of kindergarten teachers in the country.

Rep. Antonio Tinio (Party-list, ACT Teachers), author of House Resolution 2502, said the P6,000 monthly salary of kindergarten teachers is not enough for their daily sustenance.

"If computed on a daily rate, the P6,000 maximum honorarium amounts to only P200 daily, much less than the P446 minimum daily wage for the National Capital Region," Tinio said.

"Such a compensation scheme makes volunteer kindergarten teachers the lowest paid and most exploited employees of the national government," Tinio stressed.

Tinio said the scheme demeans the teaching profession and violates the rights of volunteer kindergarten teachers, the front-liners of the Aquino administration's Universal Kindergarten Program, to adequate remuneration and a living wage, among other rights guaranteed by the 1987 Constitution and RA4670, the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers.

"The hiring of qualified volunteer kindergarten teachers as regular teachers of the DepEd remains the only reasonable and just solution but pending such regularization, a substantial increase in their monthly compensation is urgently needed to alleviate their economic hardship," Tinio said.

The bill is seeking to increase to P12,000 the monthly salary of kindergarten teachers.

At present, a kindergarten teacher may handle a maximum of two classes of 25 to 30 pupils each and shall be paid a monthly honorarium of P3,000 for each class, or a maximum of P6,000 per month.

Tinio said the Kindergarten Education for All Children program is operating on a survival budget with only P209 million for personal services and P2.3 billion for maintenance and other operating expenses.

According to Tinio, the Universal Kindergarten Education Program (UKEP) has resulted in an additional enrollment of at least 1.6 million five year old pupils into the public school system.

RA10157 was signed into law by President Aquino on January 20, 2012 and was made an integral part of the basic education system of the country to provide for compulsory kindergarten that effectively promotes physical, social, intellectual, emotional, and skills stimulation and values formation to sufficiently prepare the young for formal elementary schooling.

Republic Act No. 10157 otherwise known as “KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION ACT” provides that in consonance with the Millennium Development Goals on achieving Education for All (EFA) by the year 2015, it is hereby declared the policy of the State to provide equal opportunities for all children to avail of accessible mandatory and compulsory kindergarten education that effectively promotes physical, social, intellectual, emotional and skills stimulation and values formation to sufficiently prepare them for formal elementary schooling. This Act shall apply to elementary school system being the first stage of compulsory and mandatory formal education. Thus, kindergarten will now be an integral part of the basic education system of the country.

Kindergarten education is vital to the academic and technical development of the Filipino child for it is the period when the young mind's absorptive capacity for learning is at its sharpest. It is also the policy of the State to make education learner-oriented and responsive to the needs, cognitive and cultural capacity, the circumstances and diversity of learners, schools and communities through the appropriate languages of teaching and learning.