NAAWAN, Misamis Oriental (MindaNews / 05 October) – The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations agency that promotes world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences, and culture has declared October 4, 2024, as World Teachers’ Day.
This year’s World Teachers’ Day theme is “Valuing teacher voices: Towards a new social contract for education.”
The theme emphasizes the pivotal role that teachers play in shaping the future of education, and the urgent need to incorporate their perspectives into educational policy and decision-making processes.
Indeed, teachers should be involved in matters that affect their primary responsibility and the task environment.
In the Philippines, school teachers perform functions in addition to their teaching responsibilities. They assist government agencies in the implementation of health and nutrition, and community sanitation programs. They function as well as clerks and canvassers during elections and carry out other responsibilities that the government may mandate.
Traditionally, teachers are at the bottom of the pyramid of the educational system. They have no say in how a school is run, the contents of the curriculum, the teaching load, or the teaching materials to use. Everything is decided at the top, including even their uniform.
It is high time that policymakers listen to teachers on matters that affect their professional lives and work, including issues and concerns that affect them personally, salaries, overload, overtime, and leaves – vacation, health, maternity, and emergencies.
As of 2022, teachers number 1,085,772 constituting 76 percent of all 1,435,593 filled civilian positions in government, according to the Department of Budget and Management.
Vladimer Quetua, the chairperson of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, said that the gross monthly salaries of all civilian government workers occupying positions with salary grades one to 13 range from P13,000 to P33,591 — which fall below the current daily living wage level of P1,146 or P34,380 monthly.
Included here, Quetua said, are 92 percent of public school teachers who receive “unlivable salaries” despite their professional status.
“The situation calls for the urgent passing of a new law that will significantly increase the pay of low-salaried government workers and set the minimum wage in the public sector at livable levels,” Quetua explained.
With the consistently soaring inflation rate, the group said that salary-grade 1 employees deserve to receive a minimum salary of P50,000 monthly to afford the necessities for their families. ACT Party list proposes a bill raising teachers’ starting salaries to that level.
Teachers play the defining role of molding the young into responsible citizens of the land. They are crucial in nation building and development. We need them; they should be assured decent compensation to live decent lives.
Giving attractive pay is necessary to stem the flood of teachers leaving the country for employment abroad.
The time is now.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. William R. Adan, Ph.D., is retired professor and former chancellor of Mindanao State University at Naawan, Misamis Oriental.)
