MANILA, Philippines - The government will hire 61,500 teachers and 3,500 other school personnel next year, Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara said yesterday.

The Department of Education (DepEd) “will be holding a year-long job fair to recruit its largest batch of teachers since World War II,” he said.

He said President Aquino allocated P14.6 billion in the 2013 national budget for DepEd’s teacher recruitment.

Angara, who chairs the House committee on higher and technical education, urged the Education department to hire the “the best and the brightest” among applicants and not those “with closeness and connections” to influential persons.

In picking successful applicants, he said DepEd must always observe “competitive rankings.”

“If we’re using the competition format in amateur singing contests, cooking competitions and other reality shows, then all the more that we should use it in choosing the people who will teach our children,” he said.

He said the government would be breaking records not only in hiring school manpower but in acquiring equipment and building classrooms as well.

“To be built are 31,789 classrooms and 90,461 toilets at a cost of roughly P25.3 billion, which puts on track the SONA (State of the Nation Address) promise of the President to wipe out the classroom shortage by end of 2013,” he stressed.