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[av_heading heading=’It’s not just the money’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY NEIL HONEYMAN
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January 16, 2018
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PRESIDENT Duterte’s recent loose talk about doubling teachers’ salaries was clearly not appreciated by the profession’s representatives. It raised hopes which were subsequently dashed.
Budget secretary Benjamin Diokno subsequently clarified the position which is that there are no plans for exciting developments in teachers’ remuneration.
A fully-qualified teacher entering the profession in a public school receives a government salary set at Salary Grade 11. This means that a job evaluation assessment has been carried out for teachers and Salary Grade 11 is deemed to be the appropriate level of seniority. Most government employees are graded in this way. Therefore, it is not possible under the present system, for teachers to receive more than what has been specified in the government’s Salary Standardization Law of 2015.
This means that teachers’ starting basic salary was P19,620 is 2017 rising as with all government employees on Salary Grade 11, to P20,179 in 2018. This is an increase of around three percent, somewhat below inflation.
Police and soldiers are not subject to the government pay scales to which teachers and other civil servants are employed. It seems that this has resulted in doubling the salary of ‘uniformed personnel.’ Soldiers get a hundred percent increase. Teachers only three percent. Unfair! The resulting discrepancies have attracted the concern of Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon. He points out that the doubling of soldiers’ salaries makes it necessary to examine the government’s compensation structure involving all civilian employees including teachers, nurses, and lawyers who are being left behind.
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Apart from salary issues, teachers’ morale has declined. The false promises enshrined in the ‘Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013’ (K-12) are now being shown to be just that. False. Senior High School is a substantial waste of time. Little academic progress is being made. The lack of qualified teachers for fifth and sixth year high school results in much time-wasting. The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) strand is particularly defective. Time-wasting ‘projects’, or ‘performance tasks’ underpinned by little or no grounding in the advanced concepts we are entitled to expect from Senior High School are causing ‘stakeholders’ (aka parents) to become increasingly dissatisfied.
It is not length of education but quality that determines whether or not we are globally competitive.
The Philippines is the only country in the world that has 13 years of ‘compulsory’ education before a student can enter tertiary institution. For dubious reasons LaSalle and STL students do not have to take six years of high school.
Our tertiary institutions are not globally competitive.
Now is the time to have a reappraisal of where we are in the global context.
We should rejoin the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) program to recognize that we are on the world stage and that our 15 year olds are way below international standards.
We should fully implement national examinations at Grade 6, 10, 12 to see how our students and schools are performing.
We need to establish rigorous and objective measures of attainment.
Otherwise we are just wasting time./PN
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