By Teachers’ Dignity Coalition national chairman Benjo Basas
As millions of students return to school today for the opening of school year 2025-2026, we reaffirm the readiness and commitment of teachers while calling on the government to fulfill its responsibilities in ensuring a better learning environment.
Teachers are always ready and enthusiastic to perform their duties despite the recurring challenges we face every year. But it is also the government’s duty to make sure we are not left to carry this burden alone.
Again, the school opening will be marred by persistent shortages in basic resources such as classrooms, armchairs, water and sanitation facilities and learning materials especially books aligned with the newly revised curriculum. While the Department of Education (DepEd) has acknowledged these problems, Basas lamented that the cynical response, particularly in pushing for adequate budget allocations in Congress, has been insufficient.
The DepEd acknowledges the shortages in our schools, but the question is whether their actions are enough to address them. We don’t see a strong push from the department in demanding adequate funding from Congress.
He also raised the lack of support for the implementation of the Strengthened Senior High School (SHS) curriculum, which will begin its pilot rollout in select schools tomorrow. Reports from the field show that some schools participating in the SHS pilot are not adequately supported to deliver the new curriculum effectively.
The group has emphasized the ongoing crisis in teacher welfare. The teacher shortage remains unaddressed, resulting in overcrowded classes and heavier workloads. This situation affects both teachers and learners and undermines the quality of education.
We criticized the government’s failure to improve teachers’ compensation. Filipino teachers continue to lag behind their counterparts in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in terms of salaries and benefits. Locally, we remain among the lowest-paid professionals in government service, he said.
We would like to point out the long-neglected provisions of the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers, a law enacted in 1966, which mandates benefits such as overtime pay, paid study leave, free medical examination and treatment, higher salaries and special hardship allowances. Unfortunately, many of these benefits remain under-implemented, if not totally unenforced.
We would like to cite the Marcos administration’s institutionalization of a P7,000 annual medical allowance through a health maintenance organization (HMO) beginning this year, but we criticized the DepEd for failing to implement the benefit in time.
Teachers had to pay out-of-pocket for their mandatory medical check-up again this year. Our appeal to release the allowance in cash, at least for this year, to cover such and other urgent medical needs was also ignored.
In closing, we underscored that real and lasting reform in education will remain elusive unless the government addresses these foundational issues, particularly the welfare and dignity of the country’s public school teachers.
No education reform will succeed if we continue to neglect the very people tasked to make it work: our teachers.
The group continues to engage the DepEd and other policymaking bodies to advocate for teachers’ rights, welfare and genuine education reforms.