The Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives has proposed a bill that would significantly increase teacher’s salaries in the country.
House Bill No. 9920, filed by Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas, Kabataan Rep. Raoul Manuel, and ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, seeks to raise the minimum monthly salary for teachers to P50,000.
In their explanatory note, the lawmakers said they hoped to close the gap between teachers’ salaries and the cost of living, as well as to address the distortion created by doubling the entry-level pay of military and uniformed personnel.
“Heeding the demand for substantial salary increases promotes and protects the rights of the majority of our front liners in education to decent lives, to be fully compensated for their hard work, and to a just return of the taxes they are faithfully paying,” they pointed out. “It is a matter of justice, one that must be granted at the soonest possible time for public school teachers.”
If passed, it would almost double the current basic wage for public school teachers of about P27,000 a month.
Apart from the proposed increase, the bill also seeks an annual adjustment in the pay of public school teachers and education support personnel “to keep pace with the cost of living.”
There are currently around 803,000 educators in Teacher 1 to Teacher 3 positions in the country who are earning SG11, or about P20,179, under the SSL. The lawmakers noted that other front liners, such as soldiers and the police, enjoyed a salary increase of between 50 and 100 percent under the Duterte administration, while teachers were given increases of a little over P6,000 spread across four years. Those measly increases were quickly eaten away by inflation and excise taxes, they claimed, and it’s one of the reasons why teachers would rather work abroad.
Teachers have observed Valentine’s Day by staging protests, expressing how they got their hearts broken by lack of action from government on providing higher salaries, improving benefits, and hiring additional nonteaching staff to take over administrative tasks.
The true test of a country’s priorities is often seen in the budget, and in our case, the disparity between the salaries of teachers and members of the armed forces. If our government is going to be putting more importance on education rather than buying the loyalty of the police and military, it will be reflected in the salaries of public school teachers. Whether we can afford all these salary increases for all sorts of government employees or not, is another question for our government to ponder.*
