Angara pushes for bill doubling public teachers’ monthly base pay

Senator Sonny Angara. FILE PHOTO

Senator Sonny Angara is pushing for the passage of a bill that would nearly double the current monthly base pay of teachers in public elementary and secondary schools.

Angara, a known advocate of educational reforms, said Senate Bill 61 aims to upgrade the minimum salary grade (SG) level of teachers from SG 11 to 19, “nearly doubling their current monthly base pay from P18,549 to P33,859.”

“As we celebrate our teachers’ role in the society and nation building—most especially as molders of our children’s future—we should also give priority to the welfare of our hardworking teachers,” the senator said in a statement on Friday.

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Angara was also one of the authors of the Salary Standardization Law III which raised the salary of public school teachers in 2012.

“Teachers are a special breed and to teach is a special calling. One writer once said, ‘Students are actually better off in a bad school with an excellent teacher, than in excellent school with a bad teacher,’” he said in an event in celebration of the National Teachers’ Month.

The senator has also filed a bill that seeks to provide grants and scholarship with return of service agreements to academic and non-academic personnel to upgrade their qualification through masteral, doctoral or post-graduate studies.

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There is a need, he said, to retrain teachers “to meet the instructional aptitude needed to teach an entirely new curriculum provided under the K-to-12 program.”

Angara said the scholarships and grants will also attract new teachers and researchers to the higher education sector.

“I think every teacher realizes deep in their heart that they are not doing this for personal glory or for personal riches but definitely, to leave a legacy. Ito ang nag-iisang propesyon kung saan nasusukat ang kanilang tagumpay sa tagumpay ng iba (This is the only profession wherein its victory is measured by the success of others),” the senator further said. Maila Ager/RAM