Rufus Rodriguez, a newly elected representative from Cagayan de Oro City’s second district, recommended Wednesday that half of the 16,000 new teaching positions that would be created this year go to Mindanao through the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the Department of Education (DepEd).
“I am urging DBM Secretary Amenah Pangandaman and Education Secretary Juan Edgardo Angara to give Mindanao at least 8,000 new teaching positions. This will allow our island to catch up with Visayas and Luzon in terms of literacy,” he said.
He noted that in order to solve the issue of “functional illiteracy,” which is most prevalent in the south, Mindanao requires more teachers, more training for teaching staff, and more school supplies and infrastructure, as per a recent Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) report.
“Our learners in the public school system in our part of the country have to catch up with their counterparts in Luzon and Visayas. Our education officials will not be able to solve this problem unless our island is allocated more teachers, infrastructure and equipment,” he said.
Rodriguez previously drew attention to Mindanao’s high rates of functional illiteracy.
According to the most current PSA study, 18.9 million Filipinos who finished secondary school between 2019 and 2024 would be categorized as “functional illiterate”—they were able to read, write, and calculate, but they were unable to understand what they had read.
Mindanao was home to eight of ten provinces with the “highest basic illiteracy” rates: Sultan Kudarat (14 percent), Maguindanao (13 percent), Lanao del Sur (17 percent), Zamboanga del Sur (16 percent), Sarangani (18 percent), Davao Occidental and Basilan (23 percent), and Tawi-Tawi (36 percent).
Northern Samar (20 percent) and Samar (16 percent) were the other two provinces in the top 10.
The DBM states that of the 16,000 new teaching positions, 157 are for special science teachers (SG 13), 500 are for special education teachers (SG 14), and 15,343 are for Teacher 1 (Salary Grade 11).
The establishment of the new roles “is in adherence to our President’s directive to strengthen our country’s education system,” according to Pangandaman.
According to her, it would help DepEd’s attempts to increase the number of teachers in its alternative learning system, kindergarten, elementary, junior high, and senior high schools.
