THE Department of Education (DepEd) said on Monday that pre-school teachers will soon get their monthly P3,000 honorarium which they have not received since June.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro made the announcement as he revealed that some P1.4 billion in funding for the universal kindergarten program of the department is set to be released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, who is himself a former education secretary, said P1.38 billion will fund the honorarium of the pre-school teachers from June to December this year while the rest will go to the training of teachers and monitoring and implementation of other activities under the program.

Earlier, several teachers groups such as the Teachers Dignity Coalition (TDC) and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) assailed the DepEd for the continued delay in the payment of the honorarium, saying that this only showed the lack of preparation before its implementation.

Benjo Basas, TDC national president, said monitoring of the group revealed that majority of the 30,000 pre-school teachers nationwide have yet to receive their honorarium four months after the opening of classes.

Basas said TDC expects the same problem to crop up in 2012 as the government allocated only P1.9 billion for the program.

The group has been lobbying for a free and universal pre-school education which, according to them, would eventually resolve learning discrepancies among pupils—one of the major reasons students are dropping out from primary school.

The universal kindergarten program, which was implemented starting this school year, is part of the K to 12 program or the proposed plan to add two more years to the current 10-year basic education cycle.

The government has two kindergarten programs—the regular program, which is handled by permanent teachers who have two 25- to 30-pupil classes each, and a second program conducted by volunteers.

Five-year-olds who do not make the cut for the regular program are placed in the second program, which is handled by teachers who are not regular DepEd employees but are nonetheless compliant with DepEd standards.

The education department said that volunteers are given P3,000 monthly or P6,000 for a maximum of two classes (11 to 30 pupils) or at least those who performed six hours of teaching time per day, while those with 10 or less pupils per class are paid P1, 500 per month.

About 1. 9 million five-year-old children are currently enrolled in the program.

Aside from the delay in the release of the honorarium, TDC and ACT also said there is a lack of pre-school teachers to cope with the influx of enrollees, forcing even elementary-school teachers to make up for the slack.