SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian reiterated the need to expedite the Department of Education’s hiring process to fill teaching and non-teaching positions.

Gatchalian recalled that the DepEd’s hiring of teachers can take up to six months, involving other agencies such as the Civil Service Commission and the Department of Budget and Management.

As of May 24, 2024, there are 46,703 unfilled positions in DepEd, 58% or 26,984 of which are teaching positions.

For fiscal year 2025, however, DepEd plans to create 20,000 new teaching positions.

While the National Expenditure Program allocates P5.50 billion for these new positions, the DepEd says it is short of 56,050 teachers, a need requiring P15.4 billion.

“The number of teachers we need continues to grow with our student population, and filling the 26,000 vacant positions would help address the teacher shortage,” Gatchalian said during the Senate Committee on Finance’s hearing on DepEd’s proposed 2025 budget.

He also stressed the importance of hiring administrative officers to reduce the non-teaching workload of teachers. In its Year One report, the Second Congressional Commission on Education or EDCOM 2 highlighted that public school teachers are burdened with over 50 administrative and ancillary tasks.

It can be recalled that DepEd Order No. 02 s. 2024 ordered the immediate removal of administrative tasks from public school teachers.

“I’m very pleased that next year, we will be hiring 10,000 administrative officers considering that we have about 43,000 schools, so that’s about a fourth of our schools having administrative officers,” Gatchalian added.

The NEP allocates P3.43 billion for the hiring of non-teaching positions. The DepEd, however, says it needs 20,668 non-teaching personnel, a requirement that would cost P7.9 billion.

Meanwhile, Secretary of Education Juan Edgardo Angara assured the Senate Finance panel that the department directed the schools divisions, where the hiring takes place, to speed up the process.