Lowly paid teachers ‘in London,’ honored

WORLD TEACHER'S DAY Teachers from the Manila district cheer and wave banners during the celebration of World Teacher's Day at the PhilSports Arena in Pasig City on Wednesday. ALANAH TORRALBA

If you ask Marina Peña where her salary as a public school teacher goes, she’d tell you “it’s in London.”

“People would then say wow, London!  But actually, it’s loan dito, loan doon,” Peña said, laughing.   That means loan here, loan there.

Peña and 10 other teachers from A.V. Mijares Elementary School in Baler, Aurora province, traveled seven hours to join the 10,000-strong participants at the  World Teachers’ Day celebration at PhilSports Arena in Pasig City Wednesday morning.

She heard the usual paeans to teachers and their sorry plight in a nation struggling to lift the quality of one of the world’s underwhelmed education system.

That she makes light of such a debt-strapped situation may well be regarded as remarkable: it’s a common punch line among teachers of the Department of Education (DepEd), who are forced to borrow to augment a meager salary.

For Peña, 45, mother to six students, the take-home pay is less than half her P20,000 monthly salary, slashed by deductions to repay state and private loan agencies.

She won’t say how much is left exactly, saying as she laughed, “Don’t ask. It’s embarrassing!”  Her husband, an employee at the National Food Authority, also takes care of the family’s finances.

Not all about money

Education Secretary Armin Luistro and Vice President Jejomar Binay led Wednesday’s five-hour thanksgiving ceremonies that combined speeches with entertainment. Stars like Anne Curtis, Sam Milby and Ogie Alcasid drew shrieks from the audience and gamely posed for photos.

“I think Filipinos will be a little diminished if we forgot our teachers.  Our campaign is simple: it’s not about money.  Our wish is for every Filipino to remember what teachers have done for them,” Luistro said in his speech.

Binay, himself an educator inspired by his mother Lourdes, also a teacher, underscored the role that teachers play in nation-building.

“Society has always called upon education to provide the key to human progress.  And the teacher has been a major pillar of that progress,” Binay said.

He noted the need to elevate the lot of Filipino teachers, a 500,000-strong army of educators long demanding higher pay and better benefits.

An entry-level teacher earns a basic salary of P15,649 monthly.  The amount is expected to increase to P17,099 next year upon the release of the third tranche of a pay raise under the Salary Standardization Law.

Binay, who is also chairman of the Pag-Ibig Fund, said he was also working for a housing program for teachers.

Daily grind

For Peña and her colleagues, teaching continues to be a daily challenge to make do, both in terms of salaries and school resources.

At Peña’s school, some 600 students have to share old, outdated books and contend with classrooms with leaky roofs on rainy days.

“The distribution of updated books is not fair, so we still have a shortage.  I usually use my children’s old books as my own reference books and write the lessons on the board,” Peña said.

“My only wish is for government to have equal distribution of resources.  Whatever they give to schools in urban areas, we hope they also give us, like books and other learning materials we can use,” she added.

Plea to Aquino

As Teachers’ Dignity Coalition put it, “Thank you is not enough.”  The group has long been demanding improved wages and benefits for teachers but they say President Benigno Aquino III has yet to heed their calls.

“While P-Noy (Aquino) keeps his silence on the demands of the teachers and has no concrete plan to resolve problems besetting the country’s school system, these declarations would remain empty and lip service appreciation,” said Benjo Basas, coalition chairman.

Among other things, the group is demanding the release of unpaid wages to kindergarten teachers nationwide, many of whom have yet to receive their P3,000 monthly honorarium since classes opened in June.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) echoed the call and reiterated its demand for an increase in teachers’ annual chalk allowance from P700 to P2,000.  The alliance is also pushing for an overall increase in education spending.

The DepEd has requested Congress to accommodate an increase in the allowance under the department’s  proposed P237-billion budget for 2012.

“We would not want to repeat the Arroyo administration’s failure to increase the public school teachers’ salaries for six long years which resulted in the teachers’ enormous financial burden during those times,” said ACT Representative Antonio Tinio.

“No appreciation would be greater than a higher priority given to education and its workers, not just formally but substantively through a higher budget,” he said. With a report from Nancy C. Carvajal