Zero hiring for DepEd teachers?

By Herman M. Lagon

Imagine an ordinary public-school classroom on a Monday morning. The chairs are there. The board is there. Dozens of children are waiting. One needs help reading, another is lost in fractions, two are whispering at the back, and somebody has not eaten breakfast. The bell rings anyway. Somewhere far from that classroom, a government spreadsheet carries a remarkably neat figure for hiring new teachers in the proposed 2027 budget: zero.

That zero deserves objection, although it deserves accuracy, too. Education Secretary Sonny Angara confirmed during House budget deliberations that funding for DepEd’s teacher recruitment program in the proposed 2027 National Expenditure Program was reduced to zero. DepEd is seeking PHP 4.29 billion to hire 14,274 teachers. This year, it received enough funding to hire 32,000, above its annual average of around 20,000. Angara hopes Congress will restore the allocation as the budget moves through the legislative process. That distinction matters. Zero is where the proposal begins; it is not necessarily where the final 2027 budget will end.

But the obvious question remains: Why begin at zero?

Budgets are complicated things. Education has to pay for classrooms, textbooks, feeding programs, technology, counselors, teacher promotions, special education, school safety, and learning recovery. No budget can fund every request in full. There are encouraging items in the proposal, including funding for teacher and school head promotions and additional school counselors. But when the education department itself identifies thousands of teachers it still needs, leaving teacher recruitment unfunded raises an uncomfortable question about what “priority” means once speeches become spreadsheets.

The issue is bigger than employment. I can imagine the newly licensed teacher holding a PRC ID after four years of education courses, practice teaching, volunteer work, sleepless LET review sessions, and perhaps a family celebration when the results finally came out. “Saan ako mag-a-apply ngayon?” is a fair question. Yet government does not owe every education graduate a public-school job. The stronger argument is simpler: If schools need teachers, learners deserve enough teachers. It is frustrating when a classroom needs a professional and a trained professional needs a classroom, but the funded position connecting them is missing.

Existing teachers know what happens when that position stays empty. The work does not disappear. Children still arrive Monday morning. Lessons must be prepared, papers checked, struggling learners remediated, parents answered, grades encoded, and activities handled. Research cited by EDCOM 2 found that 42 percent of teachers in one study worked more than 50 hours a week, with workload compounded by large classes, diverse learner needs, inadequate resources, and shortages of support personnel. A vacant position may look like one line in a plantilla. Inside a school, somebody usually absorbs the work.

Here lies a familiar paradox: Licensed teachers can be looking for work while schools still need teachers. The shortage is not necessarily one of people. It may involve funded positions, deployment, specialization, geography, or some combination of these. Sometimes the teacher exists. The item does not. Creating positions blindly would be poor policy, too. Government should know precisely where teachers are needed and whether hiring them actually reduces class sizes and workload. The learner knows nothing about plantilla items. She simply knows that Ma’am has many other names to remember.

Still, hiring 14,274 teachers will not magically repair Philippine education. More positions cannot by themselves fix weaknesses in curriculum, teacher preparation, school leadership, infrastructure, or learning recovery. Nor should Congress restore PHP 4.29 billion simply because the request sounds worthy. DepEd should show where the shortages are, which grade levels and specializations need teachers most, how the positions will be distributed, and what difference the additional teachers are expected to make. If Congress restores the money, taxpayers deserve to know where those teachers will go and whether learners are actually better served.

This is also why the issue should not become another political shouting match. A classroom with too few teachers does not care which political camp wins the argument. Neither should legitimate questions about the budget automatically become accusations of corruption. Congress can still change the allocation. That is precisely why budget deliberations matter: This is the moment to ask what was left out, why, and whether restoring it would better serve learners.

We Filipinos are fond of calling teachers heroes. Perhaps we should be careful with that compliment. Heroism can become a convenient subsidy when institutions expect one exhausted person to accomplish the work of two. Teachers deserve recognition, certainly. But a functioning school system should not depend on extraordinary sacrifice simply to keep an ordinary classroom running.

Somewhere today, a newly licensed teacher is waiting for an item. Somewhere else, a veteran teacher is facing another crowded class and wondering when help will come. Between them sits a proposed national budget.

One is ready to teach. One needs help teaching.

And between them, for now, is a zero.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions that employ him or with which he is connected.