‘Success should not be gauged by attendance or worksheet completion, but by tangible gains in reading, writing, and problem-solving skills.’
DESPITE decades of reforms, billions in funding, and countless promises, the Philippine education system faces a profound crisis. International organizations term it “learning poverty;” parents often call it “broken.”
Whatever the label, the truth is inescapable: Filipino students attend school but are not receiving a meaningful education.
The numbers are stark. Education receives nearly 17 percent of the 2025 national budget, totaling P1.05 trillion. Yet, nine out of ten 10-year-old students in the Philippines still cannot read or comprehend a basic text. Global assessments in reading, mathematics, and science consistently place the Philippines near the bottom, revealing a system that is fundamentally, structurally flawed.
While the pandemic exacerbated many issues, it did not cause the educational breakdown; it exposed pre-existing vulnerabilities born of neglect. Long before COVID-19, cracks were visible, but the pandemic shattered any illusion of resilience. Modular learning, often reduced to photocopies and token compliance, became a substitute for genuine instruction. Enrollment figures remained high, but true learning collapsed. The system stalled, prioritizing paperwork and press releases over substantive engagement.
Consider the K-12 program, touted as a key to global competitiveness. Instead, it has largely added layers of burden and bureaucracy without delivering the promised improvements. Employers report that high school graduates remain unprepared for the workforce, forcing colleges to re-teach foundational skills. Teachers are overwhelmed, often implementing a curriculum they had no voice in shaping.
The Department of Education’s (DepEd) centralized approach leaves little flexibility for schools to address local realities. Reforms are frequently announced with slogans and ceremonies but rarely with the necessary substance. The result is a system that values compliance over creativity, and appearance over achievement. Millions of Filipino schoolchildren spend hours in classrooms where genuine education seems absent.
Fixing this dysfunctional system requires obvious, yet critical, changes.
Decentralizing authority is paramount; local school leaders must be empowered to make decisions based on their communities’ unique needs. When the system shifts from treating teachers as passive policy implementers to valued professionals, real reform can begin.
This means significant investment in meaningful training, peer mentoring, and clear career growth pathways.
Furthermore, the focus of measurement must shift. Success should not be gauged by attendance or worksheet completion, but by tangible gains in reading, writing, and problem-solving skills. The new MATATAG curriculum will achieve nothing if it merely renames old failures. It must genuinely bridge the public-private education divide, rebuild foundational skills, and restore dignity to both learners and educators.
This is not a slow-moving policy challenge; it is a generational emergency. The critical question is no longer whether students are physically in school, but whether schools are effectively fulfilling their mandate.
Until that answer changes, the Philippines remains — painfully — a country where schools exist, but education does not.
It does not have to be this way. With real educators committed to substantive reform, the next generation can graduate from a system that truly hones them into capable, patriotic, and excellent professionals ready to face the world’s challenges.
