No more admin tasks for teachers

MANILA, Philippines — Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte on Friday formalized her directive to all school division offices (SDOs) and school heads to unburden public school teachers of administrative tasks.

In her Department Order (DO) 002 series of 2024 dated Jan. 26, Duterte ordered the “immediate removal of administrative tasks of public school teachers” to ensure their welfare and improve their quality of teaching.

“The Department of Education (DepEd) believes that the core of quality basic education is a vibrant and quality teaching workforce. Under the MATATAG Agenda, the department is committed to enhancing the delivery of quality basic education while promoting teacher quality and teacher welfare,” Duterte’s DO stated.

“This DO shall take effect immediately upon its approval, issuance and publication on the DepEd website,” it added.

As of 6 p.m. last Friday, the DO had already been uploaded on the DepEd website.

In a set of guidelines attached to the DO, the agency said the order covers all “DepEd-employed teachers engaged in classroom teaching, on a fuIl-time basis, under permanent, provisional or substitute status in all public elementary and secondary schools.”

The DepEd cited a 2018 Teacher Workload Balance Study, showing that about 50 common ancillary services not related to teaching were being assigned to teachers on top of their regular teaching load, “ultimately affecting teaching quality and teacher well-being.”

Among the administrative tasks identified in the DO were personnel administration, property/physical facilities custodianship, general administrative support, financial management, records management and management of programs not related to teaching such as feeding program, school disaster risk reduction program and other related programs.

The DepEd said these administrative tasks “shall be performed by school heads and non-teaching personnel.”

To augment the non-teaching personnel requirements of schools, the DepEd said SDOs “may cluster deployed non-teaching personnel in accordance with the deployment parameters issued by the Bureau of Human Resource and Organizational Development.”

The DepEd said that SDOs and