ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro chided the Department of Education for giving additional burden to teachers by requiring them to produce learning materials.

Castro said that teachers are overworked because they have to produce, print and distribute learning materials in addition to their other tasks.

“Teachers have been more overworked and underpaid with the blended distance learning program of the Department of Education amid the Covid19 pandemic,” Castro said.

“Teachers, even before the official start of the school year, have been burdened with producing, printing and distributing learning materials to their students with the additional requirements of the DepEd’s blended distance learning. They have been carrying the weight of making their own learning materials for their classes with little to no support from the DepEd,” she added.

The lawmaker stressed that DepEd has the responsibility to provide the curriculum, monitor and validate the content of learning materials and textbooks and guide publishers.

Castro added that there will be errors in learning materials if the Education department continues to focus on the mass production of modules instead of monitoring and validating the content of textbooks.

“Sa usapin pa lamang ng modules, palpak na ang DepEd sa pagtugon sa pangangailangan ng mga kabataan, pinapabayaan pa nito na lalong maging overworked ang kanyang education frontliners sa limitadong suporta na ibinibigay nito,” she said.