How deep is the Philippines’ education crisis, and who’s left behind?

Kit Brandy Servidad & Cirujano de Corazon

Even after many attempts to curb the existing educational predicament, the situation on the ground does not reflect what the accomplishments on paper say.

On May 28, 2026, the Second Congressional Commission on Education  (EDCOM 2) released an analysis report about Filipino learners’ reading proficiency for the School Year 2025-2026.

Piloting the Assessment

According to the results of the Senior High School Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (SHS-LNA) conducted by the Department of Education (DepEd), there are over 1.4 out of 1.9 million Senior High School (SHS) learners who are:

1. 58.9% Frustration Readers 
2. 28.5% Instructional Level
3. 12.8% Independent 

Most scrutinized are the findings from the SHS sector. Through the assessment, the commission found that at least 247,000 students can read and comprehend texts independently.

The rest would need a tinge of guidance from their teachers — or worse, a revisit from their previous grade levels’ basic instruction on reading comprehension. Such a situation raises a question: how come they progressed through the past school years if they lack the foundational skills needed for their level? 

How did it start?

Although there had been an observable decline in the education sector pre-pandemic, it became clearer when the pilot phase of the back-to-normal class schedule on November 15, 2021, was implemented to simulate face-to-face once again. However, on January 5, 2022, a virtual press briefing was conducted by DepEd to share highlights and challenges.

Former DepEd Undersecretary Malcolm Garma noted that there were 12,084 students who underwent the pilot run during its fourth week.  Garma explained that the students had difficulty in their activities and in basic literacy, which can be, in part, attributed to the shift of learning modality during the pandemic. 

“Learners hardly finish the activities given by the teacher,” Usec Garma noted. 

It was reflected in the 2022 report from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), where the Philippines ranked 77th out of 81 countries surveyed for students’ competencies in Math, Science, and Reading.

It called for immediate action from DepEd, which they answered through decongesting the learning competencies under the MATATAG Curriculum, even introducing Catch-Up Fridays as a new regimen for students to raise their competency, especially in reading. Coinciding with the Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) Program, it is intended to work by allotting Friday for reading without any subjects interfering.

What happened, however, was that teachers had to catch up with it, too: new lesson plans had to be made, which lessened effectiveness, and proceedings with the standard curriculum were slowed. Ultimately, no one benefited from the project—students only became more confused, and teachers became even more worn-out. What the department failed to consider in its implementation were the deficiencies in manpower and material resources. 

Problems with teachers

There is already an existing deficit of 56,050 teachers in the department, leading to an undesirable burden for educators handling a large population of students. 

By the Numbers:

Ideal Ratio: 1 Teacher: 30 Students

Reality: Heavily dense 1 Teacher: 50 Students 

Simply, a congested classroom does not help in improving learning conditions, but rather, worsens them. The lack of 144,000 classrooms nationwide forced the institution to cram 40-50 children in a section supervised by one teacher. And with the teacher already struggling to focus due to the high volume of students, mass promotion becomes their last resort. Consequently, it became the bane for educators that stereotyped quotas for them to pass a specific number of students.

Overload Clerical and Administrative Work

During the fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA) in July 2023, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. made a promise that nearly 100 administrative workers had already been reduced from the workforce of teachers.

“Hindi tayo tumitigil maghanap ng mga paraan upang pagaanin kahit papaano ang inyong pasanin sa araw-araw, ” he said.

But as of 2025, according to PNA,  from more than 2,000 schools nationwide, 42% of teachers still have over 50 hours a week on work despite the promise to lighten the workload stated during the 4th SONA. How is it that a higher quality of education is demanded when the educators themselves are overstretched? 

Neck-deep

This brings us back to the current situation at hand: such a percentage of struggling SHS students exists because of the past deficiencies they and their teachers went through: the post-pandemic concussion from distanced learning improperly handled by the very department that sought to improve the crisis. In the hope of no children getting left behind, it sacrificed their essential learning competencies on the way, hidden by temporal accomplishments on paper. 

In the rabbit hole of PH’s education crisis, we are neck-deep.