Sara Duterte: Raising public school teachers' salaries puts pressure on private schools

Increasing the salaries of public school teachers may result in private schools losing teachers or worse shutting down, Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte said on Wednesday. 

Duterte made the response when asked by House Deputy Minority Leader France Castro of ACT Teachers party-list if she was in favor of increasing the salaries of public school teachers.

“We presented the data to the Department of Labor and Employment...the comparison of salaries between the private educational institutions and public schools," Duterte said during the House Committee on Appropriations' hearing on the proposed P710-billion budget of the Department of Education in 2023.

"Clearly, there is wide disparity. The opinion of DOLE is that the market standard is the private sector,” she added.

Duterte said continuing to increase the salary of public school teachers would "put undue pressure on private educational institutions."

"There could be mass migration from private to public schools which we are actually seeing now. Nawawalan sila ng teachers, lumilipat sa DepEd. It will force more closures of private schools,” Duterte said. 

Castro said the answer had been repeated over the years.

“The past administrations have said the same. We should not compare the salary of public teachers to the private sector but under our Constitution, it should be based on cost of living and consumer price index,” Castro said.

“Twenty-five thousand pesos is still way below compared with other Southeast Asian countries which is at P50,000 to P60,000,” Castro added.

Duterte conceded that the DepEd needed more funding to address the learners’ problems such as raising competency in reading comprehension, mathematics and science. 

“If DepEd is given the budget it requested, we will open more programs to address the learning problems of our student," Duterte said.

"Lumapit na po kami sa Pangulo, sinabihan ko na po ang Pangulo, if you give me [additional] P100 billion, I will solve all the problems of basic education in six years,” he added. —NB, GMA News