THE DEPARTMENT of Education will hire an additional 5,000 non-teaching staff in 2023 to reduce the administrative tasks of public school teachers.

Michael Poa, DepEd spokesperson, said that this is the first time that the agency will hire thousands of non-teaching staff.

“Ideally, we will assign one administrative staff in each school, but it cannot be done in a year. We have to go through the application process,” Poa said.

He said that administrative tasks are the reason why teachers are overworked.

Monitoring compliance of pupils to the requirements of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program is one of the administrative tasks assigned to teachers.

“The 4Ps law’s implementing rules and regulation says the DepEd will participate in 4Ps, but it doesn’t mean that teachers will do it. We asked our field offices to coordinate with our counterparts in the Department of Social Welfare and Development,” Poa said.

As part of its aim to lighten teachers’ workload, DepEd will roll out a work-balancing tool to evaluate how well teachers use their working hours.