Two lawmakers on Saturday sought a congressional inquiry into the Department of Education’s Results-Based Performance Management System, which they said gives excessive paperwork to the already overworked teachers due to the lack of facilities and personnel in the department.
In filing House Resolution 2060, ACT Teachers Reps. Antonio Tinio and France Castro asked the appropriate committees at the House to look into DepEd Order Number 2, series of 2015, which provides for the guidelines and implementation of the Results-Based Performance Management System for teaching and non-teaching personnel.
In the resolution, the lawmakers urged the House Leadership “to hear the clamor of our teachers and non-teaching personnel to immediately conduct and inquiry regarding the Results-Based Performance Management System and their call for decent pay and humane working conditions.”
Tinio said the order requires teachers to submit Individual Commitment and Review Form for performance evaluation.
“The alleged purpose of the excessive paperwork is to measure the competencies of public school teachers so as to compensate them accordingly and to develop their quality of work,” he said.
“But these systems for performance-related pay, such as the RPMS have only resulted in cutbacks on the benefits of personnel and continue to reject the demand for decent salaries,” he added.
Castro said that on top of the regular tasks of checking of students’ quizzes, keeping master lists, creating lesson plans and instructional materials, teachers are “heavily burdened” by the reports they are required to submit under the RPMS, an assessment tool designed to squeeze state workers to perform beyond their capacities.
“It forces them to fulfill the requirements beyond their working hours, eating away the time that should be reserved for them to take care of themselves and their families. This system adversely affects the quality of their teaching,” Castro said.
According to the resolution, quality indicators that are used in the IPCRF such as the number of updated instructional materials provided by the teacher, existence and cleanliness of classroom and water and sanitation facilities, projects with external funding undertaken, statistics such as enrolment and dropout rates, and the like do not reflect social factors such as poverty affecting both students and education personnel, shortages in facilities and instructional materials.
“Teachers and non-teaching personnel have long been overworked and underpaid. We have received complaints from the field in relation to the fatigue and stress that excessive paperwork has brought our teachers on top of their already stressful work due to their inadequate salaries and shortages in school facilities.” Castro said.
“We continue to echo the calls of the education workers against austerity measures that deny salary increases and sufficient funding for schools, Tinio added.