SENATE Committee on Basic Education chairman Sherwin Gatchalian on Friday urged the Department of Education to integrate digitalization into its efforts to alleviate teachers’ workload and relieve them of non-teaching tasks.

Gatchalian made this call during a meeting with the Second Congressional Commission on Education or EDCOM 2, the DepEd, and other education and government stakeholders.

The meeting focused on discussing DepEd Order No. 2 series of 2024, which ordered the removal of administrative tasks for public school teachers

“The unburdening of our teachers goes hand in hand with digitalization. You cannot do one without the other. I suggest including digitalization in DepEd’s move to unburden teachers,” said Gatchalian, Co-Chairperson of EDCOM II.

“Let’s include it in the plan, how much do you need? What is the roadmap? So that every teacher will just use their laptop, input the data, and all reports come out automatically. It’s also for analysis, I know it takes time to analyze data at the central level,” Gatchalian told DepEd Officer-In-Charge of the Office of the Undersecretary for Human Resource and Organizational Development Wilfredo Cabral.

The DepEd official told Gatchalian that the DepEd started to work on harmonizing all existing information systems.

Cabral added that the automation of reports is in the pipeline and that the agency seeks to make the data more accessible while maintaining a high level of security.

In the report Miseducation: The Failed System of Philippine Education, EDCOM II flagged that public school teachers continue to perform more than 50 administrative and ancillary tasks.

Gatchalian also shared the experience of Valenzuela City.

In 2022, the city distributed laptops installed with #VCGuroAkoApp, an online portal for easier accomplishment of teacher tasks, including the uploading and sharing of documents and the generation of reports.