Ending the wait: Teachers deserve their promotions

Last Dec. 18, 2025, the Professional Regulation Commission announced that 65.04 percent, or 79,696 out of 122,528 examinees, passed the Licensure Exam for Teachers (LET).

This is a huge number of new professional teachers. The question now is, do we have enough plantilla positions so that some of them can teach in public schools across the country?

The news on LET results is a reminder that teaching is a profession. If it is, the education system should empower teachers to practice their profession and make their own decisions.

Teaching should be given its rightful “high” status, and teachers should be paid well enough to raise their families. Their investment in their bachelor’s degree, teaching experience, and beyond deserves to be well compensated like that of other professionals. Research shows that teacher pay and status affect job satisfaction and retention in the profession.

Some policymakers focus on the professional development of teachers because they claim that improving teacher quality may also improve literacy and student outcomes. The national education reformers have included teachers’ professional development as an important ingredient in solving education-related problems.

If that is the case, improving teacher quality should not be focused solely on raising standards, scrutinizing teacher evaluation, and providing more professional training alone. The key is providing teachers with their long-overdue promotions.

Since the signing of the career progression and its implementing rules and regulations up to this writing, many teachers have been waiting for so long. They also underwent a tedious application process. But the waiting continues.

From the start of The Second Congressional Commission on Education, it has been reported that typically it takes decades for a teacher to be promoted to the next position. Imagine that in other professions, a person may have been promoted several times already, but it is a reality that some teachers remain in the same rank even after two decades or more. Unfortunately, few even retire as Teacher I.

The alleged corruption on flood control projects has exposed that financial allocation can be fast-tracked with willpower of those who are in authority. People would not necessarily need to wait so much longer if the authorized person allowed it.

If the call for quality education and the allocation of the highest budget in education is authentic, it should not take the promotion of teachers for granted. Doing so will benefit teachers if the same speed can happen in approving teachers’ new items and giving them benefits on time.

It is high time that press releases are replaced by real action and new appointments. Otherwise, they become lip service. That is a sad reality for teachers who are working so hard to teach the next generation of Filipinos who will take charge of this nation.

After all, there is no better time than now to give teachers their well-deserved promotion.

Khristian Ross P. Pimentel,

khristian_ross@yahoo.com

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