It is common knowledge that education is the key for the future. We must know that good education is not provided by teachers alone but by the entire education workforce and that every member of that workforce should be equally valued. Mere teaching staff alone will not be enough in the smooth running of the education institution. While the role that teachers provide is vitally important to the standards of any school, the roles of non-teaching staff must never be underestimated. The functions undertaken by non teaching staff are all essential in the drive to improve standards in schools. Yet most often than not, these roles are undervalued.

A number of non-teaching personnel acknowledged that there was a problem regarding poor pay, unfair terms and conditions and poor career development opportunities. There was a perception that recent changes to support staff roles and training had raised disappointment. Whatever the capacity of the non-teaching personnel, the Department of Education must analyze the reasons for their disappointment; their feelings should be heard and 'attended to'.

Career development is essential to the employee. The organization can facilitate its pursuit, explore options with the employees, provide opportunities for the non-teaching when possible, encourage the employee to have goals for growth and expansion of his or her career and skills, but DepEd can do it for them. The non-teaching personnel must own their career development plan.

There were 50 non-teaching personnel in each Schools Division Offices of Manila, Marikina, Makati, Paranaque and Taguig-Pateros who participated in this study with a total 250 respondents. The researcher purposively selected 5 respondents from all the divisions who are knowledgeable regarding the human resource management and personnel's status of their respective organizations.

In designing the survey questionnaire, 'Levels of Importance questions help the researcher to assess what is most important to the non-teaching personnel. These detailed types of satisfaction questions can help the researcher to understand what non-teaching personnel likes best or least about his job and career development practices in each Schools Division Office he/she values most. Properly measuring level of importance will provide critical information to continue to provide what is expected or to modify what is not.

The rejection of the null hypothesis implies that further statistical test is necessary to determine the extent of significant difference among the division offices relative to identified career development practices in the research problem. It adopted the used of z-test to determine the possible commonalities and significant differences among the five concerned division.

A more appropriate scale was used as illustrated by numbering 0 to 5 as an interval scale. Designing the level of importance question in this satisfaction survey, the researcher assumed the following: (a) respondent insights through in-depth interview on their shared experiences and knowledge; and (b) respondents can recall using the following indicators and can give a considered response.

The respondent's assessment on how the career development practices helped them grow professionally was to "very important" with a grand mean of 3.59 and, to how the career development program provided by
Department of Education was to "moderately implemented" with a grand mean of 2.20.

The rejection on hypothesis leads to conclude that there is significant

difference between the assessments of groups of respondents on the Career Development Practices.

There are less established or clear routes for career progression for many non-teaching roles ranked the top challenges encountered by the respondents in their professional growth with 92%.

Non-teaching personnel proposed a career development program that perceptive on activities in: (a) self-understanding and development; (b) training and development opportunities; (c) availability of support networks; and (d) opportunities for career progression.

Based on the findings of the study, the following conclusions were drawn: (a) Career development practices appears consequently important to non-teaching personnel to grow professionally as it helped them to be aware of current information about the organization and future trends that help them create more realistic career development goals. Furthermore, to be more focus on skill development that contributes to learning opportunities and chances for promotion/lateral moves contribute to the employee's career satisfaction; (b)It is also important to support collaboration, peer observation, collaborative planning and the sharing of practice among all staff. Too often meeting time and collaborative time are provided to teachers but not to non- teaching staff. (c) Non-teaching personnel are expected to attend the same training as teachers, but then some of which are irrelevant and therefore frustrating. (the purely division and school level initiated career development program identified by the non-teaching personnel was in the form of gender and development-GAD seminars); (d) the Department of Education seldom offer well-defined career paths to non-teaching personnel confirming that career program for development (CPD) for support staff in most cases lags behind the CPD for teaching staff; and (e) Teacher development is a clear priority for the Department of Education, but non-teaching personnel are left out on vital career program for development.

Thus, the need to an effective career development program for non- teaching personnel.