MANILA — To boost its senior high school program, the Department of Education (DepEd) needs to hire more teachers who are not only academically-trained but are also equipped with different skills, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said.
“Before, we relied on academically-trained teachers. This time, we need teachers with different skills,” Briones said in a Palace press briefing Wednesday.
Under senior high school program, Briones said they need to field teachers based on four components: academic, technical/vocational, sports, and arts and design.
“So we need different kinds of teachers these days,” Briones said.
The DepEd has started the implementation of the senior high school (SHS) curriculum in 2015 as part of the K to 12 program.
Briones admitted DepEd has a lot of catching up to do but clarified there is no shortage of qualified teachers.
“So I would not describe it fully as a shortage, but as a reordering, as a reform in the content of education which we are introducing,” she said.
Briones thanked the Department of Education (DBM) for allowing DepEd to hire a maximum of 75,000 teachers, many of them should be proficient in English, Match and Science.
She said the DepEd’s request to hire more teachers aims to bring down the teacher-student ratio to 1:25 at the kindergarten/elementary level and to 1:40 at high school level.
“We are trying to reduce that if we get all the teachers that we want. And this is why we need additional teachers,” Briones said.
Briones said public school teachers enjoy higher salaries compared to their counterparts from the private schools.
“The average salary for grade one for the public school would be PHP21,000 plus two-month vacation, two weeks Christmas vacation and all other benefits – and the private sector cannot catch up with that,” she said.
She said DepEd has allowed over 500 of the 947 private schools that applied for tuition fee hike with the condition that 70 percent of the tuition fee should be used for teachers’ salaries.