Teachers Deserve Higher Salaries: They need full support from the administration
Teachers deserve higher salaries because the work of teachers is not easy. For so many years, teachers received an increase, but on a staggered basis, and still received a small increase. Other public employees have had a one-time and significant increase in their salaries. Teachers in DepEd are patiently waiting for a higher pay raise because they believe that the new administration will provide them.
Why do teachers deserve higher salaries? Teachers deserve higher salaries because teachers are not only physically stressed but also mentally and emotionally. Teachers are responsible for many students per section in the classroom every day. Any event in schools or towns, the teachers are involved.
Teachers are still thankful for the non-teaching personnel to be hired soon to help the teachers. Instead, the teachers would perform the administrative tasks, but VP Sara Duterte promised that DepEd would hire more non-teaching personnel to perform the administrative tasks instead of teachers. But still, they are hoping that teachers deserve higher salaries.
The Alliance of Concern Teachers shed light on the ministry of education’s old justification for closing private schools if public-sector teacher salaries are raised. The group said 80 percent of basic education schools in the Philippines are public schools and that nearly 1 million public school teachers are denied higher salaries.
The hard truth is that teachers’ salaries have long lagged behind their professional counterparts in the public sector when President Duterte doubled the salaries of police and uniformed personnel in 2018 and nurses in the public sector were given salary grade 15, the entry level salary of the Supreme Court in 2019.
ACT said in a statement that nurses in private hospitals receive lower salaries compared to public hospitals today, but this has not been an obstacle to a fair increase in the salaries of nurses in public hospitals. This is despite the fact that nurses in private hospitals are more than in public hospitals, he added.
The group said the low salaries of private school teachers do not justify the low salaries of public school teachers. As the number one employer of teachers in the country, the government should set decent standards for teachers’ salaries because it should help private schools in giving their teachers’ salaries that are on par with the public sector, he said.
Meanwhile, the group welcomed the DepEd plan to hire education support personnel in the schools. Each school should have its own nurse, registrar, custodian, clerk, librarian, security guard, and utility workers. In their absence, teachers were forced to perform these duties, which took a lot of their time and effort away from teaching. No amount of refresher courses can improve the quality of teaching until teachers are freed from non-teaching duties and freed from the need to take on odd jobs just to make ends meet.
For so many reasons, teachers deserve higher salaries. Although DepEd is a big agency compared to all agencies in the Philippines, the government and DepEd should still count teachers to raise their salaries. Teachers deserve higher salaries because they are also exposed to harm. Teachers are also frontline. Whatever happens, teachers are also exposed and involved.
All teachers are waiting for the big increase in pay. Teachers are not tired of waiting because they believe that public school teachers deserve higher salaries. The teachers’ salary increase is the reason why the teachers are diligently working on their tasks for them to be given a reward, the increase. – Doki | Helpline PH
