EDCOM 2 to phase out ‘mass promotion’, transmutation policies amid learning crisis

The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) has pushed to put an end to the “automatic promotion” system and grade transmutation policies, holding back students who cannot read and do basic mathematics from advancing to the next-grade level, as the final report has been submitted on January 26. 

The recommendation was detailed in a 600-page final report submitted by the commission, introducing the National Education and Workforce Development Plan (NatPlan) 2026-2035. 

It is a decadal roadmap directed to address the country’s persistent learning crisis. 

The plan outlines how to fix the education system from kindergarten to college, scrapping the grade transmutation policies and the “mass promotion”, practices flagged as key drivers of the learning crisis. 

In a speech, House Basic Education Committee Chairperson Rep. Roman Romulo explained that the report confirmed that mass promotion has become a “systematic culture”, allowing the students to advance without meeting the grade-level readiness. 

“Learners are knowingly allowed to proceed to higher grade levels despite the absence of mastery of required competencies and clear indicators of unpreparedness,” Romulo noted.

While there is no official policy mandating the practice, it is still reinforced by pressures on teachers and school heads to maintain high promotion rates. 

According to the commission, it has been found that only 30.52% among Grade 3 learners can read at the grade level which declines to 19.56 by Grade 6 and furtherly dipping to just 0.4% by Grade 12. 

This means that by the time students reach Grade 7, 88% are struggling to read at that level, with 40% to 52% of all junior high school students reading at least two grade levels below where they should be. 

“This practice is driven by institutional pressure to maintain high passing rates compounded by the transmutation grading policy that obscures actual learning outcomes and masks failure,” he added.

Alongside the abolishment of the mass promotion, the commission also urged the rollback of the grade transmutation policy which applies mathematical formulas to raw test scores, allowing students who score as low as 40% on an exam to receive a passing grade after conversion.

The commission argued that this grading policy created a system where actual learnings were not guaranteed to the number of years spent in schools.

“This practice obscures actual learning outcomes and masks failure,” the report stated, adding that inflated grades make it difficult to justify remediation or referrals to intervention programs such as Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) program. 

Originally intended to standardize grading, transmutation has instead distorted performance data and weakened the evidence base for learning recovery and curriculum reforms, EDCOM 2 said.

The commission targets the full phaseout of grade transmutation by School Year 2027–2028, recommending the adoption of descriptive or criterion-referenced grading in its place.

EDCOM 2 also stressed that student evaluations should no longer penalize schools for low performance, but instead guide funding, training, and targeted support where learning gaps are most severe.

The NatPlan is the country’s first comprehensive decadal education roadmap in recent history, structured around milestones in 2028, 2031, and 2035. While EDCOM 2 has been granted a two-year extension until 2027 to support initial reforms, the plan’s long-term success will hinge on sustained implementation across future administrations.