Teachers’ Month begins with same litanies

Image by DANIELLA MARIE AGACER / INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines — Public school teacher Nestor Reyes earns P32,000 a month, but his take-home pay comes down to just around P5,000 after deductions from taxes and loan payments.

“I don’t even get to touch that P5,000 because I pawned my ATM card,” he said in an interview.

According to Reyes, he was forced to borrow money after his mother underwent surgery twice, with her hospital bills totaling P780,000.

“Until now, I’m still paying for that and that’s why more than half of my income goes to the monthly amortization of my loans,” he said.

As the breadwinner in the family, Reyes needed to make extra money, so he took on part-time jobs as an on-call motorcycle rider and call center agent while classes were still being taught online.

“I go to the call center at night and sign out at 7 a.m. [the next day]. Then I attend to my dut[ies] as a teacher and teach my online classes until 1 p.m.,” he said, adding that he was only able to sleep after that time.

When teachers were finally ordered to report to their schools in person, Reyes found it hard to manage a six-hour teaching load on top of his work at the call center, so he had to let go of his part-time work in February.

Salary adjustments

Reyes and other public school teachers have long clamored for salary upgrades as they continue to be “overworked but underpaid.”

As the country marks National Teachers’ Month (in accordance with Proclamation No. 242 issued in 2011), teachers’ groups will hold on Monday a “grand lobbying” in front of the House of Representatives to once again call for increases in both their salaries and the education budget, in addition to the safe reopening of schools.

“We’re still hoping that we will be prioritized. The Duterte administration abandoned us and had our hopes up through his promises [to double our salaries] that eventually did not come true,” Reyes said.

“Education has always been a priority but [we need to remember that] teachers are also part of the stakeholders. In fact, we are the front-liners who provide education for the youth, yet we are the most neglected when it comes to services and benefits that would support our sector,” he added.

Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte, however, does not seem keen on supporting their calls for now, pointing out that teachers have yet to receive the last tranche of monthly salary hikes they are entitled to under Republic Act No. 11466, or the Salary Standardization Law of 2019 approved by her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte.

“[We] have to emphasize that they still have an increase next year,” Department of Education (DepEd) spokesperson Michael Poa told the Inquirer.

Under the SSL-V law, public school teachers from Salary Grade 11 to Master Teacher IV were given monthly salary adjustments since 2020, with the last tranche to be given next year.

For 2022, instructors classified as Teacher I with Salary Grade 11 would get a minimum monthly pay of P25,439, or P4,685 higher than their 2019 monthly salary of P20,754.

On the other hand, Teacher II would get P27,608 monthly, Teacher III, P29,798; Master Teacher I, P45,203; Master Teacher II, P49,835; Master Teacher III, P55,799; and Master Teacher IV, P62,449.

For next year, Teacher I would get a minimum monthly salary of P27,000 while Master Teacher IV would receive at least P63,997.

From 2016 to 2019, public school teachers had their monthly pay adjusted under then President Benigno Aquino III’s Executive Order No. 201.

‘Nonwage benefits’

While President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had vowed to push for legislation that would raise the salaries of teachers from Salary Grades 11 to 15 during the campaign period, he made no mention of his plans on their behalf at his first State of the Nation Address in July.

Poa, meanwhile, said the DepEd was focused on studying “nonwage benefits” or allowances as well as the hiring of more nonteaching staff to ease teachers’ administrative work.

At a previous press conference, he pointed out that it was not easy to increase the basic wages of public school teachers because “if we make it too high, it would really affect the private sector.”

“Teachers might transfer to the government, or the private sector may not be able to [give the same rate] and [this] may lead to their closure. That’s why… we will be looking into nonbasic wage benefits that we can give them,” he said.

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