Public School Teachers to receive Double of their Bonus

By: Jocelyn R. Uy / @mj_uyINQ

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 01:54 AM November 08, 2016

It’s a merrier Christmas this year for the country’s 720,000 public school teachers.

By year-end, public school teachers are expected to receive bonuses ranging from P34,000 to P64,000, double what they got in the previous year, according to Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC).

A teacher with a basic salary of P19,077 awaits the following perks: 

• a minimum of P5,000 in performance-based bonus (PBB); 
• a year-end bonus worth P19,077; 
• P5,000 in cash gift and 
• another P5,000 as productivity enhancement incentive (PEI)

according to TDC chair Benjo Basas.

“This is an unprecedented amount,” Basas said, attributing the increase in part to the significant increase in teachers’ basic salaries. But teachers, who stand to receive the maximum amount of P35,000 in PBB, can get the maximum amount of P64,077.

“The PBB, year-end bonus and cash gift will all be released this month [November] while the PEI will be given in December,” he noted.

The PBB is part of the productivity-based incentive system under the Salary Standardization Law-3 in which teachers and other employees stand to receive a bonus ranging from P5,000 to P35,000 depending on the performance of their respective schools and personnel for a specific fiscal year.

Basas said only about 2 percent of the Department of Education’s (DepEd’s) teaching force could get the maximum amount of PBB. “It’s hard to get a PBB higher than P5,000,” he noted.

Teachers and other DepEd employees and officials who received national awards last year from the Civil Service Commission, Metrobank Foundation and the National Literacy Awards will automatically receive the bonus in full at P35,000, according to DepEd rules.

Last year, an entry-level teacher got P16,774 in bonuses while about a small percentage of teachers received the maximum amount of P46,744, Basas said.