PUBLIC school teachers in Central Visayas and other parts of the Philippines are no longer required by the Department of Education (DepEd) to handle administrative tasks.
This order from Vice President Sara Duterte was welcomed by DepEd Central Visayas Director Salustiano Jimenez who said the order will enable teachers to dedicate more time to teaching in classrooms.
Administrative tasks removed from teachers include personnel administration, property/physical facilities custodianship, general administrative support, financial management, records management, feeding, school disaster risk reduction and management and other related programs.
Duterte, who serves as DepEd secretary, issued the order, “Immediate Removal of Administrative Tasks of Public School Teachers,” on Jan. 26, 2024. She first talked about it during her second Basic Education Report (Ber) last Jan 25.
“Let’s bring our teachers back to the classrooms,” she said in her speech last Jan. 25.
To guarantee the success of this policy, she declared the enlistment of 5,000 administrative staff in 2023 and an additional 5,000 in 2024.
Schools will also receive extra funds for Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses to facilitate the hiring of essential administrative support personnel.
At the DepEd 7, Jimenez said the region’s 20 schools division offices have been instructed to swiftly implement clustering strategies and deploy administrative support personnel to clustered schools.
Transfer of responsibilities
Current administrative responsibilities will be immediately transferred from teachers to school heads and non-teaching personnel, with the recruitment of administrative support staff to be completed within 60 days.
“Within the 60 days, we will transition, the teachers will still have these administrative tasks, we will just gradually take it from them,” Jimenez told SunStar Cebu on Thursday, Feb. 1.
He admitted that they are still finalizing the implementation of the order as the current school year is already in its third quarter, and that there will be a great adjustment if it will be implemented fully.
There are around two million students enrolled in Central Visayas, according to Jimenez during his speech addressing the region’s state of education last Wednesday, Jan. 31.
In a media interview that was shared on the Alliance of Concerned Teachers-Philippines’ Facebook page, Vladimir Quetua, the group’s national chairperson, said that there should be additional non-teaching personnel hired prior to implementing the program
Quetua said the DepEd should also look into prioritizing their call, which is to implement salary increase and add more benefits for the teachers.