BUTUAN CITY (May 25) — Some spent nearly four decades waiting. Others were already nearing retirement age. Many had quietly accepted they would end their careers in the same position where they began.
On Sunday, 1,559 public school teachers and school heads in the Caraga region finally received long-delayed promotions under the government’s Expanded Career Progression (ECP) system — a reform meant to dismantle years of stagnation inside the public education system.
Among those promoted were 23 educators who had rendered up to 39 years of continuous service and 91 teachers aged 55 to 64 who remained at the Teacher I level until shortly before retirement, according to the Department of Education.
The promotions were formalized during a mass oathtaking ceremony in Agusan del Sur.
For many teachers, the moment carried both relief and quiet frustration.
Under the previous system, career advancement often depended on the availability of plantilla vacancies rather than years of experience or performance, leaving thousands of educators stuck in the same rank for most of their working lives.
The Expanded Career Progression system, established under Executive Order 174 signed in 2022 by Ferdinand Marcos Jr., sought to address that bottleneck by creating clearer promotion pathways for teachers and school administrators.
In a speech delivered by Special Assistant to the President Anton Lagdameo Jr., Marcos reiterated his promise that “no public school teacher will retire as Teacher I.”
The declaration struck a chord in Caraga, where many educators assigned to remote and underserved schools spent decades balancing overcrowded classrooms, administrative work, and limited institutional support with little chance of promotion.
Government data showed that nearly 80,000 teachers and school heads nationwide have been promoted under the ECP system since August 2025.
The administration also said it had approved nearly 33,000 new teaching positions this year while expanding benefits such as hardship allowances, vacation credits, and teaching subsidies.
Still, the Caraga promotions underscored how deeply entrenched career stagnation had become in the education sector.
That some teachers had to wait nearly an entire lifetime before moving beyond entry-level rank highlighted years of structural problems that educators’ groups have long described as demoralizing and unsustainable.
For the newly promoted teachers, however, the recognition arrived with a measure of vindication — proof that decades spent serving in far-flung classrooms had finally been acknowledged by the system they had remained loyal to for most of their lives.
