Teachers protest DepEd’s implementation of suspended RBPMS
MANILA, Philippines — The Alliance of Concerned Teachers on Tuesday staged a protest to condemn the Department of Education’s (DepEd) implementation of the suspended Results-Based Performance Management System (RBPMS) that raises concerns over the submission of non-mandated documents among teachers.
The implementation of RBPMS and the Performance-Based Incentive (PBI) has been suspended under the mandate of Executive Order (EO) No. 61 issued last month. The EO has a goal of “streamlining, overhauling, improving and simplifying government performance management and incentives systems.”
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Administrative Order (AO) No. 25 (s. 2011) established RBPMS across all government agencies to administer performance monitoring while EO No. 80 (s. 2012) implemented PBI where it aimed to motivate higher performance and accountability and to ensure the accomplishment of government commitments.
The group noted the concerns expressed by teachers where orders from school divisions obliged them to submit performance forms and comply with the performance management system.
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Alliance of Concerned Teachers – National Capital Region (ACT-NCR) Union President Ruby Bernardo said that the directives put unjust pressures on teachers to comply with non-mandated documents and systems.
“This is a glaring example of DepEd’s consistent overburdening of teachers with excessive responsibilities, even forcing compliance with outdated performance review systems which not only violates an executive order but also inflicts undue stress and workload,” she said.
Bernardo also noted that the PBIs “fostered inequity and unhealthy competition” among higher-level officials and rank-and-file workers.
“Both RPMS and PBIS were implemented under the guise of efficiency, driven by foreign interests, and have prioritized austerity over the welfare of employees. The government must acknowledge these fundamental flaws and move towards completely abolishing such exploitative frameworks to ensure fair and just treatment of all public sector workers,” she added.
The group also called on the Deped to respect the Executive Order and implement a fair distribution of performance-based bonuses among government employees and to conduct consultation among stakeholders on insights on the performance evaluation and incentive systems.
