Teachers overwhelmed by nonteaching tasks

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Teachers have been feeling “overburdened” by the additional “ancillary and administrative tasks” given to them by the Department of Education (DepEd) and various government agencies, which could eventually hamper their professional development, according to the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom II).

The commission compiled all the tasks assigned to public school teachers by virtue of laws, department orders and policies in its periodic report titled “Miseducation: The Failed System of Philippine Education.”

It noted that these included making them coordinators for the following: campus journalism programs, school grievance committees, boy and girl scouts, “Gulayan sa Paaralan” program, Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program, disaster risk reduction and sports programs.

“[Teachers] have conveyed that, given the additional tasks, their working hours are insufficient,” the Edcom II report said, citing the commission’s consultations with public school teachers.

“However, they find it challenging to voice these concerns within the school settings,” it added. Teachers also observed that the tasks given to the bids and awards committee have also been passed on to them, Edcom II said.

“In other words, the prescribed six-hour teaching load, coupled with the designated two-hour allocation for teaching-related tasks and preparation, is routinely exceeded just to meet the demands of daily deliverables,” it noted.

Hindrance to quality education

It added that the nonteaching tasks could hinder them from delivering quality education and prevent them from pursuing their professional development.

The additional tasks were also not in line with Republic Act No. 4670, or the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers, which stated that a teacher engaged in “actual classroom instruction” should not be required to render more than six hours of classroom teaching in a day, according to the commission.

DepEd made a commitment in 2019 to improve teachers’ working conditions by reviewing their workload.

As an “initial solution,” it also requested the Department of Budget and Management to create nonteaching positions to undertake the ancillary and administrative tasks, resulting in 5,000 positions deployed in 2020. However, the report pointed out that this deployment only addressed a fraction of the nonteaching and administrative tasks identified by DepEd.