DepEd strives to make things right

Changes are afoot in public basic education. Last week, the Department of Education (DepEd) issued Department Order No. 002 that removes certain administrative tasks from teachers: personnel administration; custodianship of property or physical facilities; general administrative support; financial, records, and program management, including school-based feeding; and disaster risk reduction. This has long been called for by teachers burdened with nonteaching tasks. These responsibilities have significantly impeded upon their primary job of teaching, leading to poorer teaching quality.

This is a welcome direction from DepEd. This shows that they are listening to teacher and student woes and are trying to make things right. Ultimately, however, they will be judged by their implementation. DO 002 is silent on whether they will provide additional funding to hire nonteaching and support staff and instead has directed schools to bill these against their “maintenance and other operating expenses.” I somehow suspect that these budgets are ill-equipped to make room for additional personnel. If they had sufficient budget all along, then we wouldn’t be hearing about all the infrastructure and supply challenges that our public schools are facing. Even if they could realign the budget to allow schools to create job orders for temporary staff, how fast can government turn the wheels of bureaucracy in order to fill staffing immediately? Do we expect to feel the impact of DO 002 this academic year or do we need to set realistic expectations that getting additional support staff will only happen next school year?

DepEd mentioned that, in the interim, these administrative tasks can be given instead to school heads. I can imagine that school heads are already buried under a mountain of their own paperwork. Without prioritizing the immediate hiring of additional personnel, this game of musical chairs when it comes to administrative tasks will not make a dent in improving teaching quality.

A lot of Filipinos dream to become a teacher. Growing up, a teacher is typically the first nonfamily adult that believed in them and helped them realize that their dream, through education, is possible. When a person wants to become a teacher, it is usually because they want to pay it forward and help others fulfill their potential. Nobody aims to be a teacher because they want to do paperwork. In fact, the biggest surprise for a neophyte teacher is the sheer amount of paperwork and nonteaching tasks they have to do. When the weight of these tasks far exceeds their teaching duties, this can become demoralizing and lead to teacher burnout.

We must keep the dream of teaching alive, and we do so by providing teachers the necessary support. The Teachers’ Dignity Coalition called on DepEd to hire not just administrative staff but support personnel such as guidance counselors, nurses, utility workers, and security staff. I wholeheartedly agree. I remember how many of my graduate students, who are public school teachers, bemoan that they have to be both teacher and guidance counselor, which is a conflict of interest given that a teacher has an evaluation responsibility that can impede on the judgment-free space that a guidance counselor needs to provide.

When I consulted with schools, my number one rule is to recommend changes that have the least labor cost. I know that if my plan requires the teacher to do more work, it won’t get implemented. I strive to look for strategies that streamline the effort of the teacher. If more work is unavoidable, I make sure to connect that with outcome to make their extra effort worthwhile. If they see the tasks as disconnected from their teaching, however, it will simply be a cumbersome compliance.

DepEd needs to assure their stakeholders that they are cognizant of the need for long-term solutions even as they implement short-term strategies. For example, they need to be continuously advocating for new plantilla positions for administrative and support personnel in schools. This will make permanent the aims of DO 002.

The real problem of administrative tasks in schools is that there are simply too many. How about simplifying administrative tasks and their corresponding paperwork to begin with? In our own university, for example, we are asked by our human resources department to fill up a personnel data sheet every year which asked for info that we need to request from—you guessed it—the HR department. Such circular bureaucracy only bloats the number of tasks and takes up time that could be used for teaching tasks. We can also digitize our administrative tasks and data records to minimize having to input the same data again and again. There are many discussions on the use of artificial intelligence in schools, yet we fail to apply it toward school functions that nobody wants to do.

I’d like to give DepEd the benefit of good intentions. It is good implementation that we continue to ask for. The intention is there but the challenge—and its impact—is in the details.

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