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MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education (DepEd) has officially ordered the immediate removal of administrative tasks from teachers’ workloads on Friday.
The issuance of Department Order (DO) 002 came a day after Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte announced the said initiative during her presentation of the 2024 Basic Education Report.
“This DO shall take effect immediately upon its approval, issuance, and publication on the DepEd website,” the order read.
DepEd defined administrative tasks as work “related to the effective and efficient operations of schools or programs, projects, and services which are not directly related to teaching and academic learning.”
Starting the DO’s release, such tasks shall then be performed by School Heads and non-teaching personnel.
According to DepEd, citing a 2018 Teacher Workload Balance Study, around 50 common ancillary services on average are assigned to teachers in addition to their regular teaching load, which resulted in understaffed schools being unable to provide sufficient support services.
“Through this Order, the Department aims to remove the administrative tasks of teachers to enable them to maximize their time in actual classroom teaching. With this endeavor, they shall be able to focus on the teaching and learning process and become effective facilitators of learning,” the order read.
“Furthermore, this initiative by the Department shall help protect and uplift the welfare and wellbeing of public school teachers to support them to teach better which in turn shall rea-lize quality learning among the Filipino learners,” it added.
DepEd said the order covers all government-employed teachers engaged in classroom teaching, on a fuIl-time basis, under permanent, provisional, or substitute status in all public elementary and secondary schools.
It will be implemented across all governance levels, with guidelines released subsequent to the DO to guide DepEd schools, Schools Division Offices (SDOs), Regional Offices and Central offices.
Meanwhile, in order to address the non-teaching requirements of schools, DepEd stated that SDOs may opt to cluster deployed non-teaching personnel, or employ personnel under Contract of Service or Job Order, with charges applicable to either Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE) or alternative funding sources.
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