Saturday, September 22, 2012

Feature: Teachers (or applicants) must report contribution abuses

By Assy Samira Gutoc-Tomawis, RLA Education Committee

With some voluntary teachers getting a measly 2,000 pesos from donations, deducting more from them would be appalling. I write this in response to "reports" of collections for whatever school or office activities there are from teachers especially as salary time is about to come again.

The true intent and spirit of democratization of access to education is to provide free education to all Filipino learners to achieve the Education for All goals of the Philippine government.

Education officials are tasked by the government to see to it that the policy on “no collection of contributions” are appropriately implemented and applied. Neither education official should not be an agent of any commercial venture nor shall they be financially interested. It is administrative abuse to extract unreasonable amounts for snacks from teacher applicants for teacher interviews. School divisions are duly subsidized by the government to shoulder operating expenses in their MOOE from the very nature of being a public school system. If their MOOE is not enough, Divisions shouldn ideally not burden teacher applicants with the need to pay copies of forms and instead propose an increase of their MOOE.

Contributions, fees, and other forms of exactions defeat the true intent and spirit of public school education. A collection of 100 pesos for snacks actually worth 25 pesos is already a form of administrative abuse, if we go by the true spirit of public school education.

This kind of practice has been going for a long time, albeit there is actually a DepEd Order that regulates the allowed voluntary contributions. Allegedly, some school divisions are coerced to make collections due to meager funds for particular school activities and projects. More often than not, teachers, parents and/or pupils/students are victims of different forms of exactions.

A compelling RLA legislative measure should be crafted to protect teachers and students alike from any form of unreasonable forms of exactions or contributions and administrative abuses. Anyone who violates should be held accountable for.

"Moral Governance"

English - "Good governance for a progressive and peaceful BARMM."

Sinama - "Hap pamarinta tudju BARMM na sambu maka salamat"

Bahasa Sug - "Dan mabuntul tudju pa BARMM masambu iban mahatul"

Meranaw - "Mathitu a kandatu sa BARMM ko katagompiya go kalilintad"

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"Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education (MBHTE)"