Level Of Burnout Among Public School Teachers

Consecutive deaths of public school teachers all over the country have given a scare to all. Different reasons as to why these deaths occur come in many ways. One and the most known among those reason is the demand of the work in the field which was also the reason as to why death in the form of suicide happen in one of the newly hired kindergarten teacher in Bacoor, Cavite. In online news written by Joey Natividad of Bicol Today, Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) elaborated the demands of work in the field as to what was conveyed to them which caused the death of the newly hired kindergarten teacher. Accordingly, the teacher has been teaching two classes, eight hours a day with eight subjects to teach each class; eight lesson plans to prepare and eight different worksheets to prepare. Lunch breaks are more often than not spent to do task in the Principal’s office. Subsequently, as per observation of ACT, these few reasons added to the public school teachers’ low income are taking a toll on the teacher’s overall well–being.

Another reason of the deaths is depression. SunsStar reporter Ronald Reyes said that the source of the depression of the teacher was due to the teaching load, paper works, work pressure, and the work environment as to what a viral Facebook post that seek “justice” to the death of the teacher claimed. Although this case was already considered “closed”, Leyte Assistant Schools Division Superintendent Edgar Tenasas conducted their own fact-finding team to address and find solutions to prevent it from happening in the near future. Moreover, because of this, aforementioned sources of death and the reason of it surfaced. The Department then addressed one source to another to clarify misconceptions of the field.

With regards to the issue of multi-grade teaching, it was already a strategy of the DepEd “to provide access to quality education for all school-age children in remote communities where enrolment does not warrant the organization of monograde classes.” through its Multigrade Education. According to Leyte’s ASDS Tenasas, the Division of Leyte has no other choice but to assign newly hired to multigrade classes because Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) are already expected to teach future teachers or pre – service teachers the delivery of multi-grade class.

The two cases have a common factor of having extensive workloads that teachers are experiencing. To address this, last September 08, 2018, the Department of Education has given its official statement through the Department’s government webpage with regards of the teacher’s workload. The Department said that they “recognize profession’s need for conducive working condition and in keeping with Secretary Leonor Magtolis Biones’ 10 – Point Agenda, the Department of Education (DepEd) continuously reviews and reduces the workload of its teaching personnel as part of its expansion of employee welfare.” Furthermore, The Department is continuously working to simplify all the processes and forms without compromising the quality of data to be collected that are essential to proper assessment, planning and allocation of resources and intervention. This also gives the Department and its teachers to determine areas to improve and make plans to give quality basic education to its clients.

In addition, The Department of Education reduces 36 school forms down to 10 because of the two phase review of the DepEd that comprise of the creation of simplified school forms, standardization of format, updating and reducing data needed in existing school forms and making the most of the available technology and information system

This step of the department assures the Filipino community that they recognize the problem and are doing its best to address every problem in the field. The Department is also looking for intervention to prepare administrative and management reports. The recognition entails that the Department should conduct activities such as emotional readiness to address the current problem.

With this, the research proposed to determine the level of burnout among public school teachers of General Santos City West District as a basis for a proposed program for focused coping mechanism.