THE ALLIANCE of Concerned Teachers urged Senator Juan Edgardo ‘Sonny’ Angara to study the working conditions of teachers to “better understand the education crisis.”

“Teachers naturally took offense at his remarks that implied they were to be blamed for the poor state of education in the country, especially after laboring through the harrowing school year under distance learning with little to no support from the government—from which many of us are still recovering. Instead of passing on the blame and responsibility to improve the state of education to beaten down teachers, we urge Senator Angara and other legislators to dig deeper to better understand the issues hounding education,” Raymond Basilio, ACT secretary general, said.

The group claimed that teachers have “shouldered” the state’s duty to deliver education, and have filled in the gaps whenever funds are lacking.

“If anything, the only reason the youth enjoy their right to education is because our teachers insist on fulfilling their vocation against all odds, at their own expense, and despite the government’s failure to do its very mandate,” Basilio said.

“The real factor behind the chronically poor quality of education in the country is not teachers’ competencies but their working conditions—public school teachers are overworked, underpaid, and undersupported,” he added.

Basilio said that teachers have an enormous amount of non-teaching tasks on top of their full teaching loads with class sizes of up to 50 students.

“And on top of all these, teachers remain to be the lowest paid professional in the public sector. Their salary grades start at SG 11 or just P23,877 per month as compared to nurses whose salary grades now start at SG 15 or P33,575 and police and military whose base pay come to P29,668. Their allowances and benefits are still paltry despite the bigger operational expenses under the distance learning setup,” Basilio lamented.