DepEd gets no fund to hire new school principals

National

WITH no funding from the proposed 2027 National Expenditure Program (NEP), the Department of Education (DepEd) will not be able to hire new school principals next year.

The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) revealed on Monday, Oct. 20, that 45 percent of public schools lacked principal plantilla items.

DepEd had requested P10.5 billion to hire more than 14,000 new Principal I personnel next year, but the executive proposal provided no funding for the request, a report by Philstar stated.

As an alternative, DepEd Undersecretary Wilfredo Cabral said the agency would instead rely on the P12.09-billion allocation under the Expanded Career Progression framework to reclassify eligible head teachers and teachers-in-charge to higher positions.

“As we confront our learning crisis, our schools require strong leadership by able and properly assigned school principals. It is imperative that the 2027 budget considers this large shortfall, even prioritizing our 13,313 schools without either a school principal or even head teacher,” EDCOM 2 executive director Karol Mark Yee said in the same Philstar report.

About 22,000 of the country’s 45,928 public schools had principals. There are about 23,000 public schools that do not have principal plantilla items, Cabral said.

The Department of Budget and Management approved 6,000 additional Principal I positions for 2026.

Of these, around 2,000 had been filled, while 914 teachers-in-charge had been reclassified into formal principal positions.

DepEd Order 77, series of 2010, states that schools with at least nine teachers should have a principal plantilla item, while those with at least six teachers should have a head teacher item.(MyTVCebu)