GOVERNMENT CENTER, PALO, Leyte - Eastern Visayas still needs over 400 new teachers to meet the deficiency in both the elementary and secondary levels.owever, the need for new teachers might not be meet due to lack of funds of the Department of Education, admitted Rebecca Ragrag, information officer of the department in the region.
“That is why our director, Sol Matugas, is appealing to our congressmen and even the governors to help us address this problem,” she told Leyte Samar Daily Express.
Ragrag expressed the department’s gratitude to local government units in the region which hire teachers for their own localities. “
The hiring of teachers by these local government units through their school boards is really a big help in addressing our needs for teachers,” she said.
Based on the records of the planning division of the DepEd-8, 88 new teachers are needed in the elementary division while 326 more for the secondary level. At present, the region has about 21,105 teachers spread among 3,585 public elementary schools and out of the 382 public secondary schools in the region, 6,298 are teaching.
Ragrag said that out of the 88 needed teachers for the elementary, it is Northern Samar which has a high need of new teachers at 38. At present, the province has 2,964 teachers.
Leyte needs 11 more teachers in the elementary level; Southern Leyte, 4; Eastern Samar, 13; Samar; 10. It is only the province of Biliran which does not need new teachers for both in the elementary and secondary levels, Ragrag said.
Among the four cities in the region, only Calbayog (10) and Tacloban (2) are in need of new teachers in the elementary. Both Ormoc and Maasin do not need to hire new teachers, Ragrag said.
In the secondary division, it is Leyte which has the highest need at 98 followed by Northern Samar, 78; Eastern Samar, 65; Samar, 40 and Southern Leyte, 13.
Among the cities of the region, Calbayog City needs 13 new teachers in the secondary level; Ormoc, 8; Tacloban, 7; Maasin, 6.
Ragrag said that for the opening of new school year, the department expects a one percent increase in the enrollment in both levels. The one percent increase of enrollment in the region this school year is just a “conservative estimate,” she added.
Last school year, there were 656,036 students in the elementary (grade one to grade six) while there were about 249,008 students in the secondary level (first to fourth years) in the region.
Ragrag said that due to lack of teachers, it is common that there are teachers who handle more than 40 students, which is the ideal ratio. “There are really teachers who have 50 or 60 students,” she said.
“But having more than 40 students are rather isolated cases here in the region. Based in our records, the prevailing ratio for a teacher to students is 1: 48 in the elementary and 1:46 in the secondary level,” the education regional information officer emphasized.
Early this month, Education Secretary Jesli Lapus issued a DepEd Order Number 32 which contain, among others, for all public schools in the country to have just 40 students to “keep learning process more manageable.”
