Fifty percent of Filipinos think the country’s public school teachers are underpaid, results of a Pulse Asia survey showed.
The survey, commissioned by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, was conducted from June 24 to 27. It had 1,200 respondents.
Thirty-seven percent of the respondents said they thought public school teachers were being paid enough by the government.
Some three percent of the respondents said the country’s public school teachers were overpaid, while 10 percent did not give an answer.
More than half of the respondents belonging to classes ABC (57 percent) and E (53 percent) believe public school teachers are underpaid.
Gatchalian, chair of the Senate basic education committee, has pointed out that the entry-level pay of teachers in the Philippines (P25,439) was far from the entry-level pay in other Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, which pays new teachers P66,099.
He has proposed to raise the salary of Teacher I from salary grade (SG) 11 (P25,439) to SG 13 (P29,798); Teacher II from SG 12 (P27,608) to SG 14 (P32,321); and Teacher III from SG 13 (P29,798) to SG 15 (P35,097).
“Panahon na upang itaas natin ang sweldo ng ating mga guro, lalo na’t sila ay napakahalagang sangkap sa pagkakatuto ng ating mga kabataan. Kung maitataas natin ang kanilang mga sahod, maitataas din natin ang kanilang morale at mahihikayat din natin ang mas maraming mga kabataan na kumuha ng kurso sa pagtuturo,” Gatchalian said. John Ezekiel J. Hirro