DepEd to ‘redistribute’ teachers to address shortages and overcrowding

The Department of Education has issued new guidelines for the equitable deployment of public school teachers to address teacher shortage and overcrowding in various parts of the country.

DepEd Memorandum No. 22, series of 2013 sets the rules for deploying teachers in order to optimize student-teacher ratios nationwide, including cases when teachers can be reassigned to other schools. “We need to be able to transfer teachers from one station to another to address the problem of overcrowding,” says Education Secretary Br. Armin A. Luistro, FSC.

According to the DepEd’s Basic Education Information System, there are imbalances in the distribution of teachers as there were schools with a less-than-40:1 ratio while many schools still have more than 40 students per teacher.

“Overcrowding isn’t just because of lack of teachers overall. In certain areas there are more than enough personnel but they are concentrated in a few schools,” Luistro explains.