THE ALLIANCE of Concerned Teachers said that the planned hiring of 10,000 teachers next year will not ease teacher shortage as it is not enough to cover the average yearly increase in enrollment in public schools.

“From School Year 2016-2017 to School Year 2021-202, there is an average 2.5 percent increase in public school enrolment, or an average of 545,881 addition to the learners’ population in public schools. Hiring 10,000 new teachers can only accommodate these new learners, and at large class size of 55 students at that. The figures could be worse as yearly, many teachers exit the service to retire or seek better-paying jobs. Now, how can 10,000 new teaching position be of any help in alleviating the teacher shortage?” Dana Beltran, the group’s deputy secretary general, said.

“There is nothing new in creating 10,000 new teaching positions as it has been the baseline yearly allocation of the national government for several years already. This is in no way a plan to reduce the current class size or ease teachers’ workload to enable education recovery or improve the quality of education,” Beltran added.

She said DepEd needs to hire at least 147,000 teachers so that class sizes in public school can be lowered to 35.

“Its cost of P54 billion is a worthy investment for our youth’s and nation’s future. It is perfectly doable only if the national government would straighten up its priorities and rid the 2023 proposed budget of hefty allocations to questionable agency-hosted pork barrel funds, dubious confidential and intelligence funds, and onerous debt payments,” she added.

“While it is long overdue for the government to adhere to the United Nation’s recommendation of allocating education budget equivalent to 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, now is the best time to finally do it if we aim to salvage our education system from the crisis. We need to double this year’s education budget to really solve the perennial problems in education that drowns us in the quagmire that we are in,” Beltran said.