DepEd eyes more admin staff to ease teachers’ workload

MANILA – The Department of Education (DepEd) said on Thursday that it plans to increase the number of administrative staff to further ease the non-teaching workload of public school teachers following the official opening of the school year 2024-2025.

In an ambush interview, DepEd Secretary Sonny Angara said the sector still lacks administrative assistants despite deploying 5,000 non-teaching staff.

“Na-o-overburden iyong administrative assistants dahil iyong iba tatlo iyong eskwelahan iyong pinupuntahan niya (Our administrative assistants are being overburdened because others are catering to three schools),” he said.

The DepEd has yet to determine the number of additional staff, as it is conducting a study on reducing teachers’ administrative workload.

“Hihingi pa kami ng additional na tulong dito sa (We will ask for additional help in our) manpower. But at the same time, siguro babawasan na rin namin iyong mga reports (we can maybe reduce our reports),” Angara said, referring to non-teaching reports.

Meanwhile, the DepEd chief said there is still room for adjustments as some teachers were reportedly “being overwhelmed” during the pilot implementation of the MATATAG curriculum.

“There’ll be [an] adjustment period, kasi pilot pa lang siya. Iyon ang maganda dahil pilot pa lang siya kung may nais baguhin, madaling baguhin (because it’s still in the pilot phase. That’s what’s good during the pilot phase because if you want to revise something, it can be easily done),” Angara said.

Overall, he said the DepEd only encountered minor issues during the opening of classes, considering the effects of the enhanced southwest monsoon and Super Typhoon Carina.

As of Thursday, 615 public schools have yet to open classes, affecting 454,082 learners in Metro Manila, Ilocos Region, Central Luzon, and Calabarzon. The said schools are expected to open their classes on August 5.

To date, the DepEd already hit 83 percent of its target enrollment, from elementary to senior high school level, in all public and private schools nationwide.

This accounts for 23,087,785 out of its 27,722,835 learners, including 256,643 alternative learning system (ALS) enrollees.

The highest number of enrollees was recorded in Calabarzon with 3.38 million, followed by Central Luzon and Metro Manila, with 2.45 million and 2.36 million, respectively.