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25,090 teaching, non-teaching personnel to lose jobs when K-12 is in full swing
By XIANNE ARCANGEL, GMA News
Of the estimated 25,090 employees in the education sector who will be affected by the addition of two more years to the country’s basic education system, 13,634 are teaching personnel while 11,456 are non-teaching workers. The latest estimate is lower than the earlier assumption released by the Commission on Higher Education last March of 78,000 displaced.
The education cluster comprised of CHED, the Department of Education, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and the Department of Labor and Employment attributed the displacement of the personnel to the “reduction in college enrollment” that “may adversely affect the operational viability of various higher education institutions.”
Under the K-12 enhanced basic education program, a student will be required to undergo kindergarten, six years of elementary, four years of junior high school and two years of senior high school.
Stop-gap measure
To mitigate the impact of K to 12 in higher education, Congress is now deliberating on a proposal to establish a P12-billion tertiary education transition fund that will provide financial assistance to affected academic and non-academic personnel in universities and colleges during the so-called transition period.
DepEd said it also plans to rehire displaced college teaching staff as basic education teachers in senior high schools.
These proposals, however, were hit by Kabataan party-list Rep. Terry Ridon as last-minute, stop-gap measures which do not address what he sees as the problematic implementation of the K-12 program.
“The Tertiary Education Transition Fund is nothing but a last-minute stop-gap measure which aims to fool affected personnel into accepting the imminent mass lay-off. The bill now being tackled by the House committee also fails to address the transgression of fundamental labor rights of teaching and non-teaching personnel that the full implementation of K to 12 harbors,” he said.
The lawmaker is urging the government to stop the implementation of the K-12 program so DepEd and other related agencies can resolve the various issues hounding it. — BM, GMA News
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