THE DEPARTMENT of Education has issued a new policy that rationalizes public school teachers’ workload and defines ancillary tasks and assignments that can be given to them.

Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte signed DepEd Order 05, s. 2024 as a further step to ensure that teachers can devote more to classroom teaching.

By defining the allowed teaching and teaching-related tasks, the said policy also reaffirms the Republic Act No. 4670 or the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers and DepEd Order 002, s. 2024, which directed the immediate removal of administrative tasks of public school teachers.

In the said DO, DepEd provides teachers with a streamlined workload on teaching, which should be six hours of actual classroom teaching, and two hours allocated for teacher ancillary tasks which may be spent within or outside school premises.

The policy specified teachers’ ancillary tasks should be under the following categories: Curriculum Planning, Curriculum Delivery and Pedagogy, Assessment of Learner’s Progress, and Homeroom Guidance and Management.

Other tasks that do not fall under the specified teaching-related and ancillary tasks of the teachers shall be delegated to the administrative personnel of the schools.

In addition, the issuance also indicated the guidelines and procedures on the appropriate teaching load to be given to teachers and, more importantly the payment of teaching overload for those who will exceed the prescribed number of hours.

Payment of teaching overload shall be made every quarter, subject to the extent of allotment for the purpose. However, in case of insufficiency of funds, teaching overload hours shall be converted to earned vacation service credits provided under the existing DepEd policy.