16K teaching vacancies set before classes begin
The government has approved 16,000 teaching positions for the coming school year which starts on June 16, to address the lack of manpower in public schools.
Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman on Sunday announced the creation of the teaching positions that make up the first batch of a total of 20,000 positions.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) welcomed the move by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), calling it a huge improvement from the less than 10,000 teaching positions created annually under Vice President Sara Duterte, President Marcos’ education secretary until last year.
But ACT chair Vladimer Quetua also noted that the 16,000 vacancies are still a long way from the 150,000 needed to ensure quality education.
Quetua said the government should double its efforts in hiring teachers for the newly created positions.
He explained that the teaching positions created during Duterte’s tenure were not entirely filled, based on ACT’s dialogues with Pangandaman in November 2024.
He blamed slow bureaucratic movement where applications took from two to three months to be reviewed, resulting in newly hired teachers only able to start by August or at the latest by December last year.
He added that many applicants also failed to meet the criteria for the positions.
“Hopefully, all these 16,000 positions will be filled as soon as possible,” Quetua said while acknowledging that it may serve as a challenge for the government.
He also pointed out that the government should double the number of teaching positions by next school year to address the shortage of teachers and even nonteaching personnel in public schools.
The approved new positions include 15,343 Teacher I posts, with salary grade (SG) 11 or salaries ranging from P28,512 to P30,587, based on the DBM’s National Budget Circular in 2024; 157 Special Science Teachers (SG 13) with salaries from P32,870 to P35,141; and 500 Special Education Teachers (SG 14) with salaries from P35,434 to 38,049.
“The DBM’s approval of the 16,000 new teaching positions is in adherence to our President’s directive to strengthen our country’s education system,” Pangandaman said in a statement.
“This move is also in support of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) efforts to boost the teaching workforce across kindergarten, elementary, junior high school, senior high school and the Alternative Learning System,” she said.
The funding for the new teaching items, amounting to P4.194 billion, will be sourced from DepEd’s built-in appropriations under the 2025 General Appropriations Act, according to Pangandaman.
She noted that the funding was specifically earmarked for the hiring of new school personnel.
Quetua, for his part, said applications for the new teaching items should be immediately processed to avoid a shortage of teaching personnel come June 16.
DepEd’s difficulties
“They can hire in the middle of the school year since the hiring process is being implemented gradually, but hopefully they can fill in these positions as soon as possible or before [classes begin],” he said.
Quetua further noted that the number of new positions is still lower compared with the 40,000 posts that were opened every school year under then President Benigno Aquino III.
In May 2024, the DBM approved the creation of 22,323 new teaching positions from kindergarten to Grade 12 and Alternative Learning System (ALS) for school years 2024 to 2025.
A year before, in June 2023, the DBM approved 9,650 new teaching positions from kindergarten to Grade 12 and ALS for school years 2023 to 2024.
In May 2022, the DBM also approved the creation of 9,548 new teaching positions from kindergarten to Grade 12 for school years 2022 to 2023.
The DepEd, however, faced difficulty filling up the new positions in previous years.
During the Senate budget deliberation of the department in November 2023, for school years 2023 to 2024, only 3,352 teachers were hired out of 9,650 teachers that DepEd had committed to employ. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH
Sources: Inquirer Archives, deped.gov.ph
