Teacher’s salary

The teachers should also be taken into consideration, said Castro. “They work like carabaos.”

According to ACT, there are about 30,000 teachers needed to be hired for kindergarten. With the urgency to hire new teachers due to the hasty implementation of universal kindergarten, DepEd resorted to hiring volunteer teachers who will be paid P3,000 ($69) per class of three hours.

(Photo by Anne Marxe D. Umil / bulatlat.com)

Castro also said that the P3,000 is way below the minimum wage for teachers. According to Castro, the current salary of an entry level teacher in public school is P17,999 ($418) per month. ACT is proposing that kindergarten teachers should be hired as regulars and with just compensation in accordance with the government’s Salary Standardization scheme. “Otherwise, the DepEd would become the single biggest employer of contractuals in the Philippines,” she said.

Castro, also a teacher in high school for 24 years, said that teachers do their best to give quality education to their students. She, for one, uses different approaches in teaching Math and Geometry at the Quirino High School in Quezon City. “We need to use other approaches to make the students interested in our lessons. I use a LCD projector so that all students would be able to see what I am teaching. Some teachers buy lapel microphones out of their own money so that all their students would hear them.”

She also said that teachers spend for their teaching aids. Castro said that teachers in the National Capital Region receive an additional allowance of around P2,000 ($46), with some getting a little less depending on the local government. It is depressing however, Castro said, that in rural areas the allowance is smaller or nothing at all. “The effect of shortage on the budget for education is really widespread.”

Effect on quality education

The government would not be able to provide quality education unless the Aquino administration increases its budget on education significantly, said Charisse Bañez, secretary general of Anakbayan. “The poor quality of public school education in the country is deeply rooted. Until there is adequate budget in education, basic education in the Philippines will remain problematic.”

Castro, on the other hand, said that teachers really want to provide quality education to their students. But the low budget and the shortages are hampering their efforts. With the implementation of universal kindergarten, she said, the problems have become worse. “With the huge number of enrolled kindergarten pupils in public schools, some teachers handle 45 or more pupils in one class. One hour of their three hours in teaching will be spent in scolding pupils and attending to their needs like going to the comfort room. The learning time of the pupils is shortened.”

Since the first seven years of a child is crucial to his or her learning process, Castro said, the universal kindergarten program should be well prepared and not chaotic so as not to traumatize children.

“The real challenge is how to ensure that our young children go to school ready, receive quality inputs, make use of adequate facilities suited to children’s needs and are being guided by a troop of well trained teachers,” Castro said.

Gabriela launched its K+12 Watch, which started last June 13, 2011. (Photos by Anne Marxe D. Umil / bulatlat.com)

Meanwhile, Gabriela launched its K+12 Watch, which started last June 13, Monday. Lana Linaban, secretary general of Gabriela, said that they have received complaints from members of their chapters from various areas regarding the poor and inhumane conditions in which these kindergarten pupils are placed. “These five-year olds are cramped in classrooms without proper ventilation and with no decent comfort rooms. Such condition is deplorable considering that at such age, these children need enough space for mobility and proper facilities to develop their gross motor skills. Many of them may not even be toilet-trained and the lack of comfort rooms may lead to ‘accidents’ that could traumatize the child,” Linaban said.

Bañez lambasted the K+12 program saying that the Aquino government has no other purpose in implementing this but to produce semi-skilled workers which will be exploited by multinational companies. The additional two years in high school will be devoted to technical and vocational skills training. “The crisis in education will be worse because of Aquino’s subservience to the US; the neoliberal policies being pushed by the US and implemented by subservient states such as the Philippines have penetrated the education system, resulting in its commercialization and privatization,” Bañez told Bulatlat.com.

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