Making life easier for teachers

Education officials will be the first to acknowledge that the quality of Philippine education has generally deteriorated over the years. Despite a constitutional provision mandating that the biggest chunk of the national budget should go to education, funding remains a major problem in the public school system. Every school opening, students lack classrooms and school buildings, textbooks and other school supplies. Another perennial problem is the lack of qualified teachers.

Teaching is considered a noble profession, but the average pay is so discouraging that many teachers prefer to work abroad as domestic helpers. A number of those who opt to remain in the Philippines lack the qualifications to teach subjects assigned to them. Only a handful of schools, most of them in Metro Manila, can afford to pay their teachers decent wages. The poor quality of the teachers naturally rubs off on the students, undermining the nation's human resource, the most crucial component of progress.

A survey conducted last year by the Senate committee on education among 405,000 public school teachers showed that 100,009 received less than half of their gross monthly pay due to salary deductions. Around 71.5 percent of the teachers said their salaries were often delayed by one to two months, while 290,000 complained that they were deprived of overtime pay. Another 53,359 said they did not receive enough incentives or support for handling multi-grade classes. Among the respondents, 22 percent said they did not own their homes while 82 percent paid for their annual medical check-ups. With such problems, how can you get the nation's best and brightest to become educators?

In this cash-strapped government, almost all public servants are complaining of low pay. Increasing the salaries of teachers often requires corresponding increases in the pay of other government personnel including soldiers and police. It may take time before the nation can afford to pay its public school teachers enough to prevent their rallies for higher pay that often mark every school opening. But there are other ways of making life easier for teachers. Addressing the problems raised in the Senate survey can be a start.