BILLS seeking to increase the salaries of public school teachers are once again pending before Congress. The latest proposal is Senate Bill 127, filed by Sen. Paolo Benigno Aquino IV. SB 127 seeks to raise the monthly salary of public school teachers by P10,000 within the next three years, to be paid in tranches as follows: a monthly increase of P4,000 in the first year, and P3,000 in the second and third years of implementation.
The proposal is not limited to teachers in schools operated by the Department of Education. It also covers teachers in schools funded by local government units, teachers and non-teaching staff in all schools under the Philippine Science High School System, and all non-teaching personnel in the Department of Education.
But what about the private
school teachers?
Not all private schools can afford a corresponding increase in salaries just to keep up with this latest round of adjustments in the public sector. Even with the current salary rates for public school teachers now in the range of P31,000–32,000 for Teacher I in the latest tranche of increases, private school teachers are already being lured to migrate to the public school system. By contrast, the average salary in private schools is only about P13,000 across all regions. In one region, a private school teacher is paid as low as P6,000 a month.
Why not pass a law that provides a substantial salary subsidy to teachers in private schools and ensures that they receive pay comparable to that of their public school counterparts? After all, both public and private school teachers are mandated to teach the core curriculum prescribed by the State through the Department of Education.
It is also worth stressing that when private schools provide educational services, they significantly ease the government’s costs and burden of hiring more teachers and building more classrooms in the public school system. Private school teachers should therefore be compensated by the government for sharing in the delivery of education, which is primarily a public function and a public good.
In 2025, the Department of Education announced a massive workforce expansion for 2026 by opening 33,000 new Teacher I positions to address classroom congestion in public schools. This has inevitably led to more migration of licensed teachers from private to public schools in pursuit of higher pay. Consequently, more private schools are being left without licensed teachers to serve more than 3 million learners across all basic education levels in the country.
Comparable salaries give teachers real freedom of choice
If we can pass a law that provides full government support to all teachers, both public and private, more citizens will be encouraged to join the teaching profession. While the country produces a substantial number of licensed teachers every year, we lose many of them to other jobs and businesses due to the difficult conditions teachers face both in and out of the classroom.
A measure that ensures comparable compensation will give teachers a fresh and genuine outlook on the profession and, more importantly, give them the freedom to choose where to teach. Public and private schools will then be compelled to “compete” to provide a better working environment for teachers, instead of relying mainly on the promise of higher pay. More importantly, this addresses the massive migration of teachers from the private schools to the public school system due to higher pay.
This is not a new idea. In 2019, Senator Aquino also filed Senate Bill 2057, or the Teachers’ Compensation and Support Act of 2018. This bill was a significant part of his 2019 legislative agenda and is notable for proposing the Private School Teachers Salary Subsidy (PSTSS).
The PSTSS aimed to provide a government-funded subsidy to qualified teachers in accredited private basic education institutions. The goal was to help align their salaries with those of public school teachers, who had recently seen significant pay hikes. It also sought to better target low-income areas by prioritizing teachers in private schools that primarily serve students from lower-income families.
Beyond the subsidy, SB 2057 sought to mandate better working conditions across both the public and private sectors. It enjoyed strong support from the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP), the largest group of private educational institutions under the Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (Cocopea).
While the current SB 127 focuses solely on providing more benefits and support to public school teachers and their non-teaching personnel, it may be a good advocacy strategy to engage the good senator to revisit his SB 2057 to consider integrating its key provisions into his latest bill on teachers’ salaries.
After all, government measures to improve the plight of teachers must include both public and private school teachers. There should be no artificial dichotomy in their treatment. They all deserve government support.
The image of the teacher as poor, buried in debt, and left without retirement provisions is simply reprehensible. Teachers, like all other professionals, deserve to live lives of dignity and respect, supported by decent and just compensation.
