QuestionsQuestions (LETTER OF INSTRUCTION NO. 51)
It creates a Special Task Force to study a salary promotion scheme for all public schoolteachers, for implementation effective next fiscal year (or earlier if possible), including funding sources, rationale, and justifications.
The Secretary of Finance, the Secretary of Education and Culture, the Budget Commissioner, Presidential Assistant Guillerrao C. de Vega, and a representative of the Philippine Public School Teachers Association (PPSTA).
The study must include: (1) a salary promotion scheme for public schoolteachers; (2) specific funding sources for any recommended plan; and (3) the rationale and justifications for the plan.
It should be adopted for implementation for all public schoolteachers effective the next fiscal year, if not possibly earlier.
The primary factor is the steady, reliable, competent, and active participation of schoolteachers in building the New Society because they have direct contact and the most powerful influence with the young.
It notes that under the proposed Constitution, the Government is required to standardize the salary of civil servants so that teachers should not be paid lower than janitors.
That teachers were receiving lower pay than janitors, which contradicts the constitutional requirement of standardized civil service salaries.
They are described as having direct contact and the most powerful influence with the young, making them essential to the building of the New Society.
A constitutional mandate (as stated in the LOI) requiring government to establish standardized pay levels for civil servants, preventing anomalous pay disparities such as teachers earning less than lower-ranking personnel like janitors.
It states that the importance of the study is that it may later serve as a basis for preparing similar salary promotion schemes for all other employees of the Government.
They must include specific funding sources for recommended salary increases and provide rationale/justifications, while considering the primary importance of teachers’ active participation and the constitutional requirement for salary standardization.
It implies the need for inter-agency collaboration among finance, education, budget authorities, executive staff support, and teacher representation to design and fund the scheme.
In this context, it serves as an executive directive constituting a task force and requiring the preparation of a study to support an impending policy or implementation decision on teacher salary promotion.
A study containing: (1) a salary promotion scheme for public schoolteachers; (2) specific sources of funding for the recommended plan; and (3) the rationale and justifications for the plan.
It is signed by President Ferdinand E. Marcos, issued in the City of Manila on January 13, 1973.