The Department of Education revealed that after more than a month after the start of the academic year, the DepEd has yet to fill up all the 61,510 new teachers positions created in its P293.32 billion budget for the year.
DepEd has only hired a total of 55,848 teachers as of July 11 for the country’s more than 46,000 public schools. The agency has hastened the recruitment and hiring process which used to take about eight months.
The Civil Service Commission and the Professional Regulations Commission have minimized the delays in verifying and certifying the license of the hired teachers.
Since Congress approved the 2013 national budget in November last year and was signed into law by the President the following month, he said DepEd was able to start the recruitment during the first quarter of 2013.
Of the 61,510 new positions, 10,000 are for kindergarten, 17,776 for elementary and 33,734 for high schools.
When cl(–foul word(s) removed–) resumed last June 3, DepEd reported that the shortage of teachers in public schools as of 2010 stood at 145,000.
As of February, 36,923 teachers have been hired on top of the 61,510 new teachers that were supposed to start teaching last month. According to DepEd officials, they need to hire more than 10,000 new teachers each year to meet the ever increasing enrollment in public schools where about 2 million new students are added annually.