MANILA, Philippines – Employees who have rendered at least one year of service to the Department of Education (DepEd) are entitled to a P3,000 anniversary bonus, the department said in an order dated Monday, June 19.

The bonus comes as part of the DepEd’s 125th anniversary celebration and “milestone year.” The DepEd was founded on June 23, 1898.

“All DepEd officials and employees who are employed on a full-time or part-time basis, permanent, coterminous, provisional, temporary, casual or contractual whose employment is in the nature of a regular employee, are eligible for the grant of anniversary bonus,” reads DepEd Department Order No. 11.

Meanwhile, the following are ineligible for the grant:

• Personnel who were absent without leave, or no longer in service as of June 23, 2023
• Personnel who were found guilty of any offense in connection with their work during the five-year interval between “milestone years”
• Consultants, contracts of service, job orders, and “others similarly situated”

The basis of the bonus comes from a 1996 administrative order that authorizes the grant of an anniversary bonus to officials and employees in government agencies in celebration of their agency’s “milestone years,” which start from the 15th anniversary, and every fifth year thereafter.

By law, the DepEd is entitled to the lion’s share of the Philippine budget. In the DepEd’s P678.3-billion 2023 budget, there is an allotted P150-million confidential fund.

Vice President Sara Duterte, who is also the incumbent education secretary, earlier defended the need for a P150-million confidential fund to fight the “sexual grooming of learners, recruitment in terrorism and violent extremism, [and] drug use of DepEd personnel.”

On top of the DepEd’s confidential funds, Duterte was also allotted another P500 million in confidential and intelligence funds in the Office of the Vice President.

As of 2021, the total number of public school teachers in all levels of basic education is 876,842, according to DepEd data.

In 2022, the DepEd announced plans to hire 10,000 more teachers in 2023. It also set a goal to offload administrative tasks from teachers, so that they could focus more on teaching.

Filipino teachers are among the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos going abroad to work. Some, particularly those in the private sector, choose to do domestic work abroad due to better pay.

In response to this phenomenon, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration in 2018 set up a program that allows overseas Filipino workers who passed the Licensure Exam for Teachers to join the Philippines’ public school system when they return to the country. – Rappler.com