ACT Teachers party-list Representative France Castro on Wednesday, December 4, said she has filed a bill raising the minimum salary of private school teachers to PHP 30,000.
Under House Bill 5166, the Makabayan lawmaker solon proposed better pay for private school teachers, particularly those assigned in basic education and outside the National Capital Region.
“Those against increasing the salaries of public school teachers often argue that they already have salaries higher than teachers in private schools. They claim that there would be a migration of teachers from private school teachers to public schools when their salaries increase,” said Castro.
The lady lawmaker stated that it is true that many private schools receive lower salaries than public school teachers and that is why she filed a bill increasing the minimum monthly salaries of private school teachers to PHP 30,000.
The 2010 Revised Manual for Regulation of Private Schools in Basic Education of the DepEd provides for the sharing of increments in tuition increases, that is, 70 percent of the tuition collection must be allocated to the salaries and/or wages of teaching and non-teaching personnel.
“The right of private school teachers and their education support personnel must not be made dependent or conditioned on tuition increases,” said Castro.
Further, Castro said that private school teachers, like their counterparts in the public sector, have long been calling for a substantial increase in their salaries.
“Teachers in the private sector are not spared from huge class sizes and additional tasks apart from their teaching responsibility. They are also overworked and underpaid,” she said.
Castro also lamented that many private school teachers receive salaries that do not commensurate to their status as teachers.
In addition, the congressman pointed out that the extra pay would help private teachers to boost their morale and attract more teachers in private schools.
The salary increase will also help to improve the reading comprehension of Filipino youth especially and get the nation’s lowest score from 79 participating countries in the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).
Source: RMN