MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education (DepEd) is eyeing to hire 65,000 individuals for teaching and non-teaching posts in 2021.
Education Undersecretary Jess Mateo bared this Tuesday during the hearing of the House committee on appropriations on the proposed 2021 budget of DepEd.
According to Mateo, there are 988,567 positions in the department—of which only 932,760 are filled and 55,807 are unfilled.
Aside from these unfilled posts, Mateo said that they also requested for additional 10,000 posts under the proposed 2021 budget, giving a total of more than 65,000 unfilled posts.
“Ang nakalagay po doon sa positions namin sa [2021] budget na si-nubmit ay 10,000. Mas malaki pa ang hinihingi namin para mamaintain natin yang teacher-pupil ratio,” Mateo said.
“Kung mapapansin ninyo the last two budget hearings natin, the unfilled position is about 120,000. We were able to reduce it dahil yung continuous hiring natin. ‘Yung isa dito ay nababakante in the middle of the school year simply because of the retirement or resignation ng teachers natin,” he added.
In the same hearing, DepEd also said that it has no budget for the hiring of para-teachers or tutors for distance learning under the proposed 2021 budget.
“The question [of] whether there is a 2021 budget line item on the hiring [of para-teachers], there is none. What we have is the creation of the regular teaching positions and that’s what we are planning to do next year,” said DepEd Undersecretary Annalyn Sevilla.
Meanwhile, Mateo explained that its draft policy on “learner support aides” is still being finalized.
“Basically what it says is that schools division offices knowing the context by which they are operating are allowed to hire learner support aides to help the parents as well as the guardians to ensure that children will continue,” Mateo said.
According to documents provided by the DBM, government offices in the education sector got the highest allocation at P754.4 billion which is higher than the P650.2 billion allocation for 2020.
This budget covers DepEd, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and the state universities and colleges across the country.
Meanwhile, DepEd has the second highest budget allocation for next year among the different government agencies, just behind the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).