PUBLIC school teachers can heave a sigh of further relief after the Department of Education said it will streamline school forms and reports to “significantly ease” their administrative burden.
Education Secretary Sonny Angara said this will allow teachers to focus their time on improving student learning outcomes.
The new DepEd policy, according to Angara, will mark an approximately 57 percent reduction from the total of 174 school forms previously required from teachers.
Under this policy, five forms will be regularly completed by all teachers.
However, Angara said teachers may also accomplish 31 forms for teacher ancillary tasks and 39 forms for teaching-related assignments, which may vary depending on the agreed designations of teachers by virtue of their rationalized workload.
“Teachers have long raised concerns about excessive paperwork, and this policy directly responds to that. Reducing their bureaucratic workload will not only improve their well-being but also enhance the quality of instruction they provide to our learners,” Angara added.
He said his office will issue a formal department order to implement the new guidelines, accompanied by nationwide orientation sessions to ensure smooth execution at the school level soon.
The move was partly a product of a study conducted by DepEd’s Technical Working Group on school forms that Angara established, which revealed that teachers spend excessive hours on non-teaching tasks.
“An IDInsight study found that 42 percent of teachers work more than 50 hours per week, dedicating an average of 17.8 hours to ancillary duties and 8.1 hours to program-related tasks,” Angara said.
“Much of this time is spent on filling out school forms and reports, significantly reducing the time available for lesson planning, student engagement, and instructional activities,” he added.
To establish a more efficient reporting system, DepEd will also create a Data Management framework which shall set the standard parameters for data collection in all schools.
“This effort shall eliminate redundant and outdated documentation requirements while ensuring essential school management information is accurately recorded,” Angara explained.
Early this month, Angara said the department is set to renew and hire more than 7,000 administrative support staff to ease the workloads of public school teachers.
He said the renewal and hiring of 7, 062 school-based Administrative Support Staff under Contract of Service (CoS) is part of the department’s efforts to remove non-teaching tasks from teachers, ensuring that they can dedicate more time to lesson preparation and student engagement.
Last year, the DepEd issued an order mandating the immediate removal of administrative tasks from public school teachers.
This was followed by another order that rationalizes teachers’ workload and provides guidelines for compensating teaching overload.
The 2025 General Appropriations Act has authorized the creation of 10,000 positions for administrative officers and support staff in DepEd.
The Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) earlier said its study found that two out of three public school teachers in the country work beyond their 40-hour workweek, largely due to administrative tasks.
