05/08/2026
Following Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Angara's claim that teachers are being cared for through a 57% reduction in paperwork, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines stressed that teachers' workload has only grown heavier under the three-term school calendar. ACT pointed out that the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program has been piled onto teachers' regular teaching duties, while the government has failed to hire enough education support personnel to relieve teachers of non-teaching tasks.
"Hindi naman pagkalingang matatawag kung higit na pinabigat ng DepEd ang trabaho ng mga g**o. Kung may dapat matutunang aral ang ahensya, iyon ay ituring na tao ang mga g**o at hindi makina. Pinagkumahog at pinag-abono na noong bakasyon, tuluyan pang ikinarga ang dagdag trabaho ngayon samantalang ipinagkakait ang makatwirang kompensasyon," stated Ruby Bernardo, ACT Chairperson.
ACT also questioned the utilization of the P8.9 billion allocated for the ARAL Program, noting that DepEd has yet to disclose how many dedicated tutors it has hired against its target of 448,000. The group further exposed that, despite DepEd's own guidelines stating that participation should be voluntary, public school teachers nationwide have reported being assigned as ARAL tutors. ACT added that teachers have yet to receive just compensation for serving as ARAL Summer tutors, sacrificing what should have been their vacation while also shouldering out-of-pocket expenses for learning materials and other program needs.
The group also slammed DepEd for limiting compensation for teachers serving as ARAL tutors to either teaching overload pay or service credits. ACT pointed out that, based on the current computation of 0.188 service credit per hour, a teacher who serves as an ARAL tutor for an entire month would earn only a minimum of one service credit.
ACT further cited reports from teachers who have long struggled to avail themselves of service credits earned from additional duties. The group also noted that many teachers have been classified as "underload" due to shortened class periods, despite handling more than six classes daily and carrying numerous administrative and ancillary responsibilities. As a result, these teachers are effectively compelled to count ARAL tutoring as part of their regular teaching load to comply with the required six hours of actual classroom teaching, depriving them of additional compensation for the extra work.
ACT called on Secretary Angara to match his rhetoric of ensuring teachers have enough time with concrete action by deloading ARAL from regular teaching load, hiring dedicated tutors for the program with just compensation and benefits, providing all necessary program resources, and immediately paying DepEd teachers and external tutors who served during last school year's ARAL implementation and this year's ARAL Summer Program for the services they have rendered.
The group also urged the Marcos Jr. administration and the DepEd to take decisive steps to address the country's learning crisis by allocating at least 6% of the country's GDP to education, resolving the chronic shortages in classrooms, teachers, education support personnel, learning materials, and other basic education needs, ensuring decent and livable salaries for teachers and education workers, and overhauling the education system into one that is genuinely scientific, nationalist, and mass-oriented. #
5 August 2026 | PRESS RELEASE
ACT to DepEd Sec. Angara: Overworking teachers is not care, remove ARAL from their workload
