August 12, 2025
MANILA – The Department of Education (DepEd) on Monday reported a significant drop in the number of struggling readers, crediting the decline to its new learning initiatives.
According to DepEd, the number of 3rd-grade students tagged as “low-emerging readers” dropped from 51,537 to 1,871 across all regions due to summer literacy drives like the Learning Recovery Program (LRP) and Bawat Bata Makababasa Program (BBMP).
In Northern Mindanao, DepEd said the initiatives significantly increased the number of students who can read from Grades 1 to 3:
- 673 to 6,588 in Grade 1 (Mother Tongue)
- 719 to 6,398 in Grade 2 (Filipino)
- 539 to 6,703 in Grade 3 (Filipino)
- 355 to 5,100 in Grade 3 (English)
In total, DepEd reported improving the reading skills of 50,000 learners through the LRP and an additional 42,000 through the BBMP.
READ: 18.9M Filipino graduates in 2024 found to be functionally illiterate
DepEd expressed confidence it can sustain this progress with Republic Act No. 12028, the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (Aral) Program law, which will support the expansion of the LRP and BBMP.
“Thanks to the Department of Education’s measures under the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning Program, the number of students struggling with reading continues to decrease,” DepEd said in Filipino.
The government, through DepEd, implemented stronger reading initiatives following alarming findings on the state of education and literacy in the country.
In 2021, a World Bank report revealed that learning poverty in the Philippines had risen to 90 percent, with nine out of 10 children under age 10 unable to read.
READ: WB: 9 out of 10 PH kids age 10 can’t read
Meanwhile, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that a total of 18.96 million Filipino students who graduated from junior and senior high school in 2024 are considered functionally illiterate—meaning they can read but struggle to understand what they read. Verleen Dasigan, INQUIRER.net trainee