A summer remediation drive for senior high school learners wraps up this week, the Department of Education said, part of a widening response to assessment data that has exposed how few older students can read on their own.
DepEd Undersecretary for Learning Systems Carmela Oracion confirmed on Monday that the program ends as the agency rolls out fresh literacy checks. “Siniseryoso talaga ng department ‘yan. Beginning with the senior high school remediation program this past summer. Mag-i-end iyon tomorrow,” she said.
The urgency follows figures from the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) showing that 87 percent of Grade 11 students are non-independent readers. Oracion did not downplay the number. “Gusto kong sabihin na 87 is no small number. A bit of a background on this, actually for the past few years, meron tayo iyong assessments na CRLA for Key Stage 1 (Kindergarten to Grade 3) and then Phil-IRI for Key Stages 2 and 3 (Grades 4 to 6, up to 10). And then last year, we saw that the results were very bad,” she said. She put the department’s position plainly: “I’d like to state very clearly that DepEd recognizes that this is very serious.”
Rather than a problem rooted in senior high school, Oracion framed the results as the product of shortfalls building since the early grades. “When a Grade 11 learner…struggles to read independently, it signals that the problem did not start in senior high school…This is a cumulative gap that has come to be over a period of time,” she said.
She traced the decline to several overlapping pressures: poverty, thin academic support at home, scarce reading and learning materials, repeated interruptions to classes, and lingering pandemic learning losses. Among these, she singled out poverty as a defining obstacle, noting that many Filipino children grow up without the educational basics that wealthier peers take for granted.
Oracion also located the crisis within the education system as a whole, while drawing a careful distinction. “I agree that whatever problem we are facing now, as indicated by the assessment results, is really a broader failure of the education system. I will not say that it is a broader failure of the K-12 system,” she said.
Looking ahead, the department has scheduled diagnostic testing before classes resume to flag students needing closer support. “Ang gagawin natin next week, June 8 until June 11, ay magli-literacy assessment na tayo, para malaman natin sino pa ba ang nangangailangan ng special attention,” she explained.
DepEd intends to weave remediation into the entire school year through its new three-term calendar, which Oracion described as a structural fix for learning recovery. “Umaasa tayo sa benefits ng three-term school calendar. We really think that this is a move to organize the way we run a school year. Imbis na labo-labo, halo-halo, ang ginagawa natin, there’s a dedicated time for teaching and learning,” she said. She added that the calendar carves out room beyond academics: “There’s also a dedicated time for remediation, enrichment, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities. We state for a fact that not only academics are important in the education and formation of a child. Importante din ang mga remedial, enrichment programs, at activities.”
While gaps persist at every grade level, Oracion said younger learners are starting to show progress. She conceded, too, that teachers remain stretched thin even after efforts to cut paperwork. “Ang isa ko pang nakikita iyong overburdened school teachers. Palaging nilalabas ‘yan ng ating mga kasamahan sa field. Ginagawa naman talaga rin ng ating HR office ang lahat. Na-simplify na ang mga forms,” she said.
