Review of Related Literature.

(RRL)
(LOCAL)

1. https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1773682 (2017)
LAST week a teacher in Mabini, Compostela Valley committed suicide due to personal issues.
Fe Concepcion, 55, a teacher of Pindasan Elementary School in Compostela Valley, committed suicide
inside the classroom’s comfort room on November 7. 
Department of Education (DepEd)-Davao said the suicide of Concepcion was due to personal matters.
Concepcion is among the growing list of teachers committing suicide. With social media, news of these
teachers would spread like wildfire over the internet.
Previous reports of teachers committing suicide would attribute their deaths allegedly due to the workload
at school, others were due to depression.
The suicide among teachers is quite alarming. The rise of reports on suicide in the country in general is
already alarming.

DepEd must act fast to help the people it hires. They cannot merely say that they are mourning over the
death of a teacher or say that they will look into it or even tell the public that it was non-work related. The
more they say that, the more they come out as apathetic towards the welfare of public school teachers.
They cannot say the lack of budget to provide some form of support or guidance system for teachers.
They too cannot say that they employ a large workforce, therefore they are unable to meet everyone's
need.

They should be able to provide a sort of emotional, psychological, and spiritual support. It is their
mandate as employers to care for the people they hire.
If it is too hard for DepEd to attend to the needs of its teachers, it could hire a third party to do it for them.
As long as they are provided the support they need.
In a report by Philippine Star in August 2018, Deped undersecretary Annalyn Sevilla said the agency will
be looking into the string of suicides committed by teachers. She also stated that the agency will be
implementing support systems for teachers who are experiencing depression or thinking of suicide.
However, this is not only for public schools. Private schools should also take care of their teachers too.
We hope the schools will be able to implement these support systems soon. Teachers are humans, they
have emotional, spiritual, psychological, and physical needs that must also be attended to.

2. DepEd probes teacher Suicide – Janvic Mateo, Philstar (aug 30, 2018)

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education (DepEd) will investigate recent cases of teacher
suicides following allegations that these have been caused by heavy workload. Education Undersecretary
Annalyn Sevilla said they have created fact-finding committees at the regional level to determine the
cause of the incidents. DepEd will also work to ensure that the mental health of teachers and other
education stakeholders are recognized and well taken care of, according to Sevilla.  “We need professional
advice and (psychological and spiritual) guidance and we will engage with external partners to provide
assistance to our teachers like a hotline for them to call when they are depressed or have anxiety,” she
told The STAR. “We have to be responsive to needs related to this – the implementing rules and
regulations of the mental health law ongoing, support system of teachers need to be strengthened, more
de-stressing activities, find hobbies or interests,” she added. The Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC)
yesterday met with DepEd officials to discuss concerns over the supposed workload. It cited the heavy
burden of paperworks as among the reasons of  the teacher who hanged herself in Cavite last week. The
organization also cited heavy workload as a possible factor in another teacher suicide in Leyte last
month. “Two cases of suicide in just two months purportedly due to work-related issues should alarm the
DepEd and take necessary steps. We have been raising the issue of overburden due to clerical tasks
required of teachers,” TDC chair Benjo Basas said. “Recently, the DepEd made things worse when it
introduced the new performance rating system that would again result in heavy workloads. We appeal to
Secretary Leonor Briones to put a halt on all of the required non-teaching related tasks, class observations
and paper works and listen to us in a dialogue,” he added. Basas said the DepEd should stop the
implementation of the results-based performance management system and the order requiring the use of
daily lesson logs and detailed lesson plan. For the DepEd, Sevilla said that while a single case of death is
saddening, it is very inaccurate to highlight this as representative of the situation of the more than 800,000
public school teachers in the country. The management system has already been improved with fewer
content and formats readily available, she said. The DepEd has also created 5,000 non-teaching, 4,000
specialized teaching and 3,000 guidance counsellor positions to unload existing teacher workloads. 

3. By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz & Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco

A group of concerned Filipinos and a congressman has called on the government to act on the spate of
suicide involving teachers and children.The Teachers Dignity Coalition (TDC) on Sunday urged
Education Secretary Leonor M. Briones to help unburden teachers with workloads following the two
suicide cases in just two months allegedly due to work-related issues.The Department of Education
(DepEd) is also in the mind of Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund F. Villafuerte who filed House Bill
(HB) 7858 following reports that Filipino kids as young as 10 years old have committed suicide because
of depression. Villafuerte is pushing for the passage of a measure mandating the DepEd to include life
education and peer counselling programs in schools.“Two cases of [teachers’] suicide in just two months
purportedly due to work-related issues should alarm the DepEd and take necessary steps,” a statement by
the TDC said. “We have been raising the issue of overburden due to clerical tasks required to teachers.”
The TDC issued the statement on August 26, after receiving news a teacher took her life after 21-year-old
Emylou Malate, a multi-grade teacher in La Paz, Leyte, committed suicide in their house in Limba village
on July 14.

ACCORDING to TDC National Chairman Benjamin Basas, the DepEd’s introduction

of a new performance rating system called “Learner Information System,” or LIS,
adds pressure to teachers.

The DepEd has claimed the LIS helps teachers cut time spent on the system and
allows them to focus on teaching. However, the TDC insisted “that [LIS] would again
result to heavy workloads.” “We appeal to Briones to put a halt on all the required
nonteaching-related tasks, class observations and paperwork and listen to us in a
dialogue,” the group said. “How many more teachers will commit suicide [for you to
listen to us]?”
However, the DepEd has said it is banking on the migration of the LIS to the
department’s Cloud facilities and the provision of enough resources for more than
100,000 daily users, which is four to five times the usual capacity of LIS. The DepEd
emphasized this could see more users able to work with the system during the day
than at night or wee hours of the morning.

“Complaints from parents and teachers have been passed on to us about the LIS,
which [they said] keeps them sleepless,” Briones said. “The continuous improvements
in the department all aim to help improve the welfare and efficiency of our teachers
and personnel.”

DEPED Undersecretary for Administration Alain Del B. Pascua said the LIS
dashboard now registers an average of 130,000 teachers accessing the system from 8
a.m. to 5 p.m. and only less than 1,000 users at night—opposite of the common
traffic.

“This is only the beginning of a department-wide effort to improve the efficiency of

existing DepEd systems,” Pascua said. “It is long overdue and it will go a long way in
helping our teachers have more time to teach than working on the LIS.”

Since the improvement, system problems due to high volume of users were
encountered for only three days between July 30 and August 1. The increase in
capacity of key resources to accommodate more users resulted in minimal reports of
slowdown.

Migration to the Cloud was a strategic decision, which allows the DepEd to easily
increase or decrease the capacity of the LIS based on the current requirements without
going through the long process of purchasing new equipment, Pascua explained. It
also ensures that LIS will continue operations even in cases of blackouts or other
untoward events that might affect the DepEd’s Data Center, he added.

The DepEd has also established a project team whose sole purpose is to improve the
LIS. Recent enhancements now allow schools to enroll eligible learners who were
unable to finalize enrollment in the previous school year, Balik-Aral learners who
have no record in the previous year and transferees from public and private schools.
Once all the planned interventions are completed, teachers will no longer need to
spend long hours complying with the requirements of the LIS.

DepEd Information and Communications Technology Service (ICTS) Director Abram

Y.C. Abanil, meanwhile, said the DepEd is working nonstop in their assessment of
existing systems, apart from the LIS, “to ensure that they fulfill their objective of
simplifying work.”

TO address suicidal tendencies of children, Villafuerte is pushing for the

institutionalization of a Youth Suicide Prevention program.

The bill also intends to establish Youth Health Centers to address the stigma of mental
health and identify youth issues.

According to Villafuerte, he filed the bill following the approval by Congress of the
Comprehensive Mental Health Act, which aims to respond to the mental-health needs
of Filipinos by integrating mental health into the general health-care system.

While the proposed law is now just waiting for the President’s signature, there is still
a room for a preventive system in the case of youth suicide in the country, Villafuerte
said.

Under the bill, the DepEd, in coordination with the Department of Health (DOH), is
mandated to formulate and include in the elementary and secondary education
curriculum a course on Life Planning.

“Life Planning Education [LPE] shall require lectures and discussions on self and
identity; personal, family, community values; communication and interrelationship
with others; sexuality and gender roles; community participation; health;
psychological thinking and employment, among others,” the bill states. Training shall
be provided to school administrators, teachers, guidance counselors and other school
personnel responsible for delivering LPE, Villafuerte said.
ACCORDING to the lawmaker, youth suicide came into public light during a Senate
Committee on Youth hearing on the report by the National Poison Management and
Control Center (NPMCC).

Villafuerte said the report stated that Filipino kids have committed suicide because of
depression. He noted the NPMCC’s report said about 16 percent of the total suicide
cases recorded are from the youth, teens aged 10 to 19 years old.

A study on the prevalence of suicide attempts among Filipino youth showed that
roughly 1 in 10 Filipino youth aged 15 to 27 has considered suicide an option, he
added.

The lawmaker said implementing a peer- counseling program in schools will

encourage positive mental health for students.

“It should include a peer-counseling training course that teaches basic counseling
skills, as well as a mentor-mentee program to stimulate relationship and confidence
building and skill and academic motivation,” Villafuerte said.

Under the bill, the Department of Health is tasked to conduct research and
development (R&D) programs on “the effectiveness of new and existing youth suicide
prevention strategies, techniques, technology, including clinical studies and
evaluations of such strategies and related research aimed at reducing youth suicide
and providing support for emotional and behavioral disorders, which may lead to
suicide attempts.”

The DOH may also “establish a linkage with national government agencies, local
government units [LGUs] and nongovernment institutions to establish a network of
health facilities and teen centers catering especially to young people in order to
address their identified youth issues.”

These health facilities and teen centers shall provide family services, peer counseling
and other related services and may collaborate with parents, schools, religious groups
and youth-serving organizations to successfully implement youth suicide prevention
strategies, Villafuerte said.

(INTERNATIONAL)

1. Primary School Teacher’s suicide rate, nearly double nation average – Mary Bulman – March 17,
2017
The suicide rate among primary school teachers in England is nearly two times higher than the
national average, figures have revealed.

Risk of suicide among primary and nursery school teachers was 42 per cent higher than patterns in the
broader population of England during the period 2011 to 2015, according to data released by the Office of
National Statistics (ONS). There were 139 suicides among teaching and educational professionals during
the period, and almost three quarters (73 per cent) of these — or 102 Analysis showed the risk of suicide
among low-skilled male labourers was three times higher than the male national average, while an
elevated risk was also detected for women in culture, media and sport occupations, which was 69 per cent
higher than the female national average. Male and female carers meanwhile had a risk of suicide that was
almost twice the national average, according to the data.
suicides — were recorded as primary and nursery schoolteachers.
The striking statistics on primary school teachers come amid warnings that growing pressures in the
profession — in which around 90 per cent of staff are women — have made it “one of the most highly
stressed occupations in the country today”, with a number of former and current teachers telling  The
Independent the "unmanageable" workload has caused them to develop mental health issues.
John Coe, Information Officer at the National Association for Primary Education (NATE), said the
statistics were “highly worrying”, adding that pressures in the sector were already a growing concern,
with an increasingly “competitive structure” and growing prominence laid on national assessments.
“There is no doubt at all that being a primary teacher is one of the most highly stressed occupations in the
country today,” Mr Coe told The Independent.“The impact of government policies and the maintenance
of a highly competitive structure of schools — inspections, league tables and all the rest — of course
leads to a lot of pressure.

“Teachers taking days off for stress has become all too common. They’re all worried about maintaining a
good reputation for their school and being able to meet the requirements of the national assessment
procedures.“To hear that the suicide rate is so high among primary teachers is enormously worrying and I
do hope that the stats are placed on the table in front of the Secretary of State for Education.
Josie Bowler, 23, started a PGCE after graduating from her undergraduate degree in September 2015, but
quit her first primary school placement — a year one class — because the pressures of the job triggered
a mental health problem.
“Everything started well, I enjoyed being with the children and the other staff, but I quickly found that the
workload was unmanageable,” Ms Bowler told The Independent. “Every lesson there was some kind of
assessment against whether the children had met the lesson objective. If children hadn't produced enough
work or not performed at their expected level — which sometimes was unavoidable, due to things like
illness or playground tiffs — there was a lot of blame placed on the teacher who taught the lesson.

“Not outwardly — it was more like an undercurrent of blame. It felt like if a kid didn't write a whole page
it was my fault, and the level of mixed ability in the class meant that lots of lessons effectively had to be
planned twice.“There was a lot of pressure to get it right for every child, but that takes a lot of work.”Ms
Bowler, who is now in a different job, said she began having difficulties sleeping and stopped eating
properly due to the mounting stress, which also started to damage her relationships with others, and
eventually led to her leaving the job and seeking mental health support.“It got to the point where I
couldn't sleep and wasn't eating well. I barely saw my family or my boyfriend. If he came round he
usually got handed photocopied sheets with ‘success criteria grids’ or pictures of light sources and told to
cut them out,” she said.

“I lasted until January and then one day I had a massive panic attack in Sainsbury’s. I knew I couldn't
keep doing it to myself, so the next day I phoned in sick and went to the doctor.“He signed me off
immediately and said that if I had managed anther month he would have been surprised. When I told him
I was a trainee teacher, he said ‘ah, I thought you might be’. I got the impression that I wasn't the first to
turn up at the surgery like this.
“It took me months of medication and counselling to recover. At my worst I couldn't get out of
bed. I know several of my friends also quit their training or didn't apply for jobs after their training
because it was so hard."Another trainee teacher, Sophie Stone, who has been working with a year five
class at a school in Buckinghamshire for two years, said she feels "constant pressure" working in an
environment where children are so frequently assessed, and that it has interfered with her personal life.
“I work in year five currently and we've recently had an 'assessment week', where they completed six
assessments in total varying between 40 minutes to one hour each," Ms Stone, 24, told The Independent.

“It was clear to see the panic and worry in those children who are regularly heavily supported by a
teaching assistant, now having to complete something that is unsupported and entirely their own,
independent work.“I've had children who have said to me they're scared of leaving year five because they
think their SATs will be so difficult. It's far too much pressure for children of such a young age“I feel a
constant pressure which is really stressful. There are always deadlines, such as assessment data, and
meetings, delivering quality first teaching... the list is endless.

“Most weekends my friends, family or boyfriend will ask if we can go somewhere or do something and
most of the time I have to say no, as I need the weekend to prepare myself for the following week —
whether that's planning lessons, writing evidence proving I'm meeting the teaching standards or preparing
resources.“It's hard to maintain a work-home life balance which can sometimes put strains on
relationships — I sometimes feel like I'm losing valuable time with loved ones.”

Mr Coe said that while secondary school teachers were facing similar pressures, the increasingly
competitive method of examination hits primary teachers particularly hard, due to the inherently
“nurturing” aspect of the role.“Secondary schools have, ever since World war Two, been dominated by
the examinations set at the ages of 16 and 18. They are used to it. That doesn’t mean that secondary
teachers are not fighting against it, but it is traditional in secondary schools that there is a dominance of
the examination,” Mr Coe added.“Whereas teachers choose to teach primary children, who are
substantially women, know they’ll be put in charge of a class for at least a year, and they will be unable to
resist a nurturing aspect to their role.“This is why a heavily competitive externally demanded way of
running a school and expecting certain results hits hard at the primary teacher. It is against all that their
nature tells them teaching should be.”

The figures come after an influential cross-party committee of MPs warned last month that teacher
shortages in England had reached a “crisis” point, saying the Government was failing to come up with a
coherent plan to tackle a lack of staff in core subjects. MPs urged ministers to take urgent action to
address the shortage, which is set to worsen with pupil numbers at secondary schools expected to spike by
more than 500,000 to 3.3 million by 2025.The committee’s report said the Government lacked a long-
term plan to address teacher shortages and called on ministers and school leaders to consider options such
as “capping” the number of hours teachers work outside of teaching time in a bid to retain staff. Mr Coe
added that in order for change to the "failing" system, the partnership between teaching professionals and
the state needs to change. “The teaching profession has been at odds with Government, and successive
governments, over a good number of years," he said."There hasn’t been effective partnership between the
profession and the elected government of this country."There was a total of 18,998 suicides among men
and women aged 20 to 64 between 2011 and 2015, constituting a rate of around 12 deaths for every
100,000 people per year.
 2.

REFERENCE.
3. https://www.pressreader.com
4. https://www.philstar.com/other-sections/education-and-home/2018/08/30/1846977/deped-probes-
teacher-suicides
5. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/primary-school-teachers-suicide-rate-
double-national-average-uk-figures-a7635846.html
6. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/primary-school-teachers-suicide-rate-
double-national-average-uk-figures-a7635846.html
7. https://businessmirror.com.ph/2018/08/26/suicide-of-teachers-children-prompts-call-for-govt-
action/
8. https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/19/12/safeguarding-mental-health-teachers
9. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct19/vol77/num02/The-Elephant-in-
the-Classroom.aspx