DepEd lacks nearly 90,000 teachers - Pia Cayetano

Addressing the long-standing problem of the Department of Education (DepEd) with shortage of teachers remains to be a challenge as a total of 89,506 teaching positions have yet to be filled, Senator Pia Cayetano, the agency’s budget sponsor, said Thursday.

During the Senate plenary deliberations on the proposed 2024 national budget, Cayetano said the DepEd plans to hire 20,000 teachers for the next school year.

She said that the funding for such would fall under the agency’s Inputs to Basic Education program and would require P5.6 billion.

For School Year 2023-2024, Cayetano said only 3,352 teachers were hired out of 9,650 teachers that DepEd had committed to employ.

She, however, stressed that the DepEd is confident that it would attain its goal by the time the current school year ends in July 2024.

“For 2023, the amount of P2.725 billion was in the GAA and this is meant to hire 9,650 new teaching positions,” Cayetano said.

“As to why only 3,352 have been hired, this is because the NOSCA or Notice of Staffing was only released in July… The hiring process is ongoing as we speak. DepEd assures us that they will be able to fill roughly 96% because that is their annual average…in filling the unfilled positions,” she added.

During the same hearing, Cayetano announced that Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte is letting go of the DepEd P150 million confidential funds for 2024.—AOL, GMA Integrated News