THE ALLIANCE of Concerned Teachers called for the immediate suspension of Department of Education Memorandum No. 29, s. 2022 mandating teachers in Level 1 areas to report to their offices.

ACT said the order is “mechanical, unreasonable and counter-productive.”

The group reiterated its proposal to DepEd last March 7, 2022 for a more “flexible and responsive” work arrangement for teachers, after many local DepEd offices in the provinces required the daily physical reporting of all teachers in their schools.

“DepEd’s full adoption of the IATF order for 100 percent onsite reporting in government agencies is mechanical and blind obedience to a policy that does not take into consideration the peculiarity of our teachers’ tasks under blended learning, and the situation of our public schools which are far different from the many other government offices,” Raymond Basilio, the group’s secretary general, said.

He added that other government offices have nurses and functional clinics but most public schools have none.

Basilio said that requiring teachers to report to school daily while their students are at home is unnecessary and unreasonable, especially that their work, by nature, is relatively independent and individualized compared to the more collective nature of the office work of other government employees.

“Teachers should come to school for face-to-face classes and other actual activities that need their physical presence such as for physical meetings, seminars, distribution/retrieval of modules and parent-teacher consultation. However, it is unreasonable and counter-productive to order them to sit in empty classrooms and do work that they can better accomplish at home where they have already set-up their more responsive working stations,” Basilio said.

He asserted that work arrangements for teachers at this point when 90 percent of students are still under distance learning modalities should be discussed and determined at the school level, where the school’s actual capacities and plans, and the teachers’ real conditions will be given due consideration.

“Our teachers are not against physical reporting per se. For the longest time, we have been asserting for the safe reopening of schools as we see classroom instruction as the best way for our students to learn, especially now that we are experiencing a severe learning crisis. Instead of issuing premature orders for 100 percent onsite reporting of teachers, the DepEd should focus on hastening the preparation and providing for the needs of safe school reopening so that teachers and students alike can safely go back to school,” Basilio said.