THE ALLIANCE of Concerned Teachers urged the Department of Education to hire 30,000 new teachers each year until 2028 to resolve the teacher shortage and improve the quality of education.

ACT made the statement after Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte’s pronouncement that the agency plans to hire new teachers every year.

“At present, we are short of 147,000 teachers to decisively reduce the class size to 35 students and ensure that our teachers can effectively teach and monitor the progress of each of our learners. Approximately, we need to hire 25,000 new teachers yearly until 2028 to eradicate the shortage, and an additional 5,000 new teachers to cover the yearly increase in enrolment, which totals to a requirement of 30,000 new teachers yearly,” Vladimer Quetua, the group’s chairperson, said.

Quetua added that the hiring of new teachers each year is not new. He explained that the creation of 5,000 new teaching jobs each year is included in the national budget.

“However, these were only enough to provide for new teachers for the increase in the learner population, and not to cut down the class size to improve education quality.” Quetua said.

ACT said the government will need around P14 billion to hire 30,000 teachers, based on the Department of Budget and Management’s data that the personnel services cost of an entry-level teacher is P465,760 per annum.

“We are sure the people’s taxes can support this if only the government would give due premium to education,” Quetua said

“The DepEd also needs to resolve the bureaucratic red tape that hinders speedy hiring of teachers. The agency could not even fill up all its vacant teaching items while thousands of applicants have been deemed qualified based on its Registry of Qualified Applicants,” he added.