Sunday, March 16, 2008 Councilor seeks increase in basic pay of teachers
A CEBU City councilor is asking the country’s legislative bodies to enact a measure increasing the basic pay of teachers so they will not be enticed to look for high-paying jobs here or abroad.
Councilor Edgardo Labella, whose stepmother is a school teacher, was concerned because the country’s public education system “has been losing thousands of highly qualified mentors who were either pushed to work overseas or were absorbed by the public sector of the country.”
Teachers, he said, play a dominant role in shaping the minds and building the character of millions of students, who will be the country’s next leaders.
Serious implications
Losing them would have serious implications for the future, he added.
Abroad, Filipino teachers of English, Mathematics, or Science subjects “can effortlessly land a job that approximately pays from $34,000 to $47,000 annually” or $2,833 to $3,916 a month.
If a dollar is equivalent to P40, then teachers are paid P113,320 to P156,640 a month outside the country.
But with a salary grade of 10, the more than 500,000 public elementary and high school teachers of the country are paid a measly P10,933 to P12,997 a month.
Call centers and other business process outsourcing companies, too, dangle high-paying jobs to English-proficient public school teachers.
Fast turnover
“One step to lessen, if not completely eradicate the fast turnover of highly qualified school teachers to overseas employment or well paying private sector jobs, is by way of a legislative measure designed to raise the basic pay of (teachers),” Labella said in a proposed measure.
He said that an increase in their wages would help raise the teachers’ quality of life and make working abroad a remote option for them.
“It would also mean bolstering the nobility of the teaching profession as well as strengthening of the public school system in the country,” the councilor said.
He said both the Senate and the House of Representatives should seriously consider enacting measures designed towards increasing the teachers’ basic pay.
“So that they (teachers) will not be forced to leave the public education system of the country to look for high paying jobs here and abroad,” he added. (RHM)
