LGUs told to pay for own teachers, classrooms

Local governments should pay teachers’ salaries and construct classrooms using their own money instead of relying on the Department of Education (DepEd) to address these problems, a state-run think tank said.

According to a study by Danilo Israel, a Philippine Institute for Development Studies research fellow, local government units (LGUs) are increasingly unable to pay teachers’ salaries as much as those paid by the national government given the growing demand for teachers and limited resources.

Israel’s study entitled, “Improving Local Service Delivery for the MDGs in Asia: The Case of the Philippines,” showed that instead of hiring teachers, local governments had to resort to supporting para-teachers and volunteers who are given low wages without benefits.

Deficits in teachers and classrooms had been hounding the basic education sector for years because of this constraint in financing, he said.

“To address this, local governments should not only rely solely on the SEF [special education fund] for provision of education,” Israel said.

The SEF income grew from P8.5 billion in 2001 to P15 billion in 2008, or an average of 0.23 percent between 2001 and 2008, while SEF expenditures grew P7.8 billion in 2001 to P11.5 billion in 2008.

To alleviate this problem, local governments should instead dip into their 20-percent development fund to finance education, which some LGUs are already doing, Israel said.

“[But] the remaining shortfall in the number of teachers and classrooms is still significant,” he said.

In contrast, the textbook-pupil ratio improved dramatically from 1:6 in school year (SY) 1999 to 2000 to 1:1.2 for all subjects, with the exception of secondary level English, which had a ratio of 1:2 in SY 2007 to 2008.

“Though DepEd has trained 151,389 teachers in Science, Math, and English; has spent resources for 7,446 of high school non-major teachers to possess Certificates in Science or Math education; and has enrolled 3,670 in Science and Math courses in 2008, more resources and investments are needed to ensure quality teachers for high quality education,” Israel said.

He study proponent recommended that DepEd should to revise the standards and procedures for hiring teachers by following National Competency-Based Teacher Standards competency-based rather than credential-based selection criterion. –Darwin G. Amojelar, Manila Times