Higher salaries,not K+12 — teachers

The Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) challenged President Aquino to take action on several bills for teachers’ compensation pending before the houses of Congress.

Benjo Basas, the group’s chairman said “this is the high time to discuss the pending bills on teachers’ salaries and this is far more important than the proposed K+12 program of the government.”

Basas noted that several bills have been proposed since the opening of the 15th Congress and the most common were proposals that sought to upgrade the salaries of public school teachers from the current Salary Grade 11 (SG-11) to higher positions under the Salary Standardization Law 3 (SLL-3), which was fully implemented last month.

“We appreciate any proposal that seeks to augment the living of our teachers because this is a testament that the legislators know what is due the teachers and the government recognizes its mistake for putting us in a very low position in government classification.”

Basas said Rep. Trisha David has proposed an upgrading of teachers’ salaries from SG-11, a monthly rate of P18,549, to SG-14 or P23,044. Meanwhile Representatives Ivy Arago, Mitch Cajayon, Mark Mendoza, Antonio Tinio and Rey Umali have submitted their respective versions of the higher salary upgrading bill from SG-11 to SG-15 or P24,887. The same version of the bill was separately introduced in the Senate by Senators Ferdinand Marcos, Ramon Revilla and Manuel Villar.

Various versions of the salary upgrading bill were also submitted in the House by Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara (SG-11 to SG-19) or P33,859 and the highest appraisal comes from Pampanga Rep. Carmelo Lazatin (SG-11- to SG-22) or a monthly pay of P42,652. While in the Senate former senator Zubiri pushed for SG-18 or P31,351 and Sen. Antonio Trillanes batted for SG-20 or 36,567 monthly.

All these proposals seek to augment the salary of entry level or Teacher-1 position holders in government schools while Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano revived the additional support and compensation bill in the Senate. This bill seeks to provide a P9,000 monthly increase for all teachers and education workers was the alternate bill for salary upgrading, which in 2008 became the rallying point for teachers’ demand for salary increase that resulted in the passing of SSL-3.

“It seems that lawmakers from all parties are united in their desire to provide better compensation packages for public school teachers and this is a statement that Malacañang cannot ignore. The President should act swiftly on these proposals instead of selling the idea to expand the basic education through K+2, which is not only unpopular, but ambitious, unnecessary and unrealistic as well.” Basas bewailed.

For the TDC and other teachers’ groups, K+12 would not resolve the problems of the public education system and could only worsen its already dismal condition.

“If the President (were) really sincere reforming the system of education, he should focus on the teachers. All the scientific studies, including statutory principles and international declarations conclude that the single most important factor in education is the teacher. And therefore putting us in paramount consideration would drastically translate into an improved quality of education output and the entire public school system,” Basas averred.

The TDC, which earlier stated that it would support the administration if Aquino would be responsive to the problems of education sector, would formally seek a dialogue with the President to tackle the necessity of providing them better compensation. –Jason Faustino, Daily Tribune