The final report of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2), which conducted three years of study to diagnose the ills affecting Philippine education and recommend reforms, has shown depressing findings, indicating that while the biggest slice of the country’s annual budget continues to be allocated to education, as mandated in the Constitution, there seems to be no breakthrough in lifting Filipino students out of their dismal proficiency levels.
Based on standardized assessment data of the Department of Education from 2023 to 2025, EDCOM 2 said that language and numerical proficiency of Filipinos sharply decline as they move through the school system, “becoming negligible” when they reach high school.
The 2024 findings in Early Language, Literacy, and Numeracy Assessment showed that at least 30.52 percent of Grade 3 learners were considered “proficient” or “highly proficient.” meaning they were able to recognize letters and sounds, read common words, understand short phrases, count on their own, or do simple numerical problem solving. But almost 70 percent of those Grade 3 learners struggled with those skills.
By the time they reach Grade 6, proficiency drops by 11 percentage points to 19.56 percent, meaning that only one in five students was considered proficient. These rates plummet further in high school, with only 1.36 percent or 14 out of 1,000 students in Grade 10 and 0.4 percent of Grade 12 students found proficient in basic problem solving, managing and communicating information, and analyzing and evaluating data to create ideas.
In short, the majority of high school graduates don’t have the basic literacy skills they need to succeed in college or even hold simple first jobs for K-12 graduates.
The findings show that no progress had been achieved since the Philippines was included in the Programme for International Student Assessment in 2018 and 2022, which found that Filipino students were among those with the lowest rankings in reading, math, science, and creative thinking globally.
The EDCOM 2 report said the root causes of this systemic “proficiency collapse” include childhood stunting that affects 23.6 percent of learners, widespread mass promotion of students despite a lack of proficiency, and fragmented governance.
The country’s education system needs a lot of work if Filipino students are going to be proficient and competitive in a brave new world that has been transformed by rapid advances in technology. That is the challenge that the DepEd will have to urgently face if the next generation is going to have a chance.*
