DepEd has more than 47,000 vacancies

Education Secretary Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara. (Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau)

Filipinos looking for work can try to look for one at the Department of Education (DepEd), which is struggling to fill up more than 40,000 vacant positions, including newly created teaching and school-based nonteaching positions.

Education Secretary Juan Edgardo Angara has ordered all DepEd offices to fill vacancies that seem to have become a challenge for the agency.

In an Aug. 5 memorandum, Angara instructed all bureau and service directors, regional directors and schools division superintendents to “exhaust all measures to expedite” the hiring.

DepEd currently has 46,703 vacancies or 4.53 percent of the 1,030,897 total authorized positions.

“The remaining vacant items pose a challenge to the operations of offices and to the absorptive capacity of DepEd. Further, these challenges affect the approval of subsequent proposals for the creation of items from the DBM (Department of Budget and Management),” read DepEd Memorandum No. 42.

According to Angara, all DepEd field offices must accomplish a “catch-up plan” to strictly monitor the hiring. The plan must be submitted to the DepEd’s Bureau of Human Resource and Organizational Development-Personnel Division on or before Aug. 9.

In May, the DBM approved the creation of 5,000 nonteaching posts for DepEd to relieve teachers of administrative tasks as ordered earlier this year by then Education Secretary and Vice President Sara Duterte.

Duterte then said in her order that the removal of administrative tasks would enable teachers to focus on actual teaching and classroom duties.

However, several teachers’ groups decried the mere 5,000 nonteaching posts created, saying the number would not be enough for the more than 47,000 public schools nationwide.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) proposed that at least two administrative personnel be assigned or hired per public school.

Health professions

ACT also asked DepEd to hire personnel who could serve as nurses in school clinics, roles some teachers had also been forced to take.

Meanwhile, the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) said it was working to avert a crisis in the allied health sector, citing the shortage of 12,000 radiologic technologists as the most pressing concern.

In a House budget hearing on Thursday, CHEd Chair Prospero de Vera III said there were five areas in the allied health sector “where we will have (manpower) supply and demand challenges,” based on data from the Department of Health (DOH) and various hospitals across the country.

READ: Angara orders filling of vacant DepEd positions

These are radiologic technology, medical technology, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and pharmacy, De Vera said.

“Out of the five, we have a serious problem now with the availability of radiologic technologists in the country. In the other four, projected problems would be more pronounced in three to five years from now,” he told lawmakers during a hearing on CHEd’s proposed P31.68-billion budget for 2025.

Based on the DOH database as of June, the sector has 6,519 radiologic technologists; 25,680 medical technologists; 1,716 physical therapists; 267 occupational therapists, and 7,432 pharmacists.

Current focus

De Vera said “increasing allied medical manpower is still being discussed in the Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC) meeting with the President, but our instruction was to focus on radiologic technologists because that is the one where there is already a significant supply-and-demand gap.”

The CHEd will work to address the lack of schools that offer the program for such professions, ensure a high passing rate in licensure exams, check the available hospital positions, and come up with more attractive salary packages, De Vera said.

The entry-level salary for radiologic technologists in government hospitals is around P27,000, or Salary Grade 11, he said. INQ