A militant lawmaker on Wednesday filed a bill increasing the minimum salaries of private school teachers to P30,000 per month.
House of Representatives' Assistant Minority Leader France Castro of ACT Teachers said private school teachers, particularly those assigned in basic education and outside the National Capital Region suffer unequal treatment when it comes to their salaries and benefits.
''Those against increasing the salaries of public school teachers often argue that they already have salaries higher than teachers in private schools. They claim that there would be a migration of teachers from private school teachers to public schools when their salaries increase," Castro said. "It is true that many private schools receive lower salaries than public school teachers. That is why we filed a bill increasing the minimum monthly salaries of private school teachers to P30,000."
The 2010 Revised Manual for Regulation of Private Schools in Basic Education of the DepEd provides for the sharing of increments in tuition increases, that is, 70 percent of the tuition collection must be allocated to the salaries and/or wages of teaching and non-teaching personnel, Castro, member of the Makabayan Bloc, said.
"The right of private school teachers and their education support personnel must not be made dependent or conditioned on tuition increases," she added.
Castro said private school teachers, like their counterpart in the public sector have long been calling for a substantial increase in their salaries.
"Teachers in the private sector are not spared from huge class sizes and additional tasks apart from their teaching responsibility. They are also overworked and underpaid," Castro said.
The lady legislator lamented that many private school teachers receive salaries that does not commensurate to their status as teachers.
According to her, there are even reports of private elementary and high school teachers being paid salaries ranging from P3,000 to P6,000—this despite being licensed professional teachers and possess the necessary and desirable qualifications for teaching."
According to the Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry for the Education sector for all establishment in 2015, there were already 43,900 primary and elementary private school teachers, 94,300 general secondary private school teachers and 28,700 private pre-primary or pre-school teachers.
