Pandemic, school disruption stunt learners' reading skills

• Published date: 26 November 2022
• Publication title: Philippines News agency

The country is celebrating National Book Week from November 24 to 30 amid the struggle to arrest Filipino learners' dwindling reading proficiency.

Even before the pandemic struck, international large-scale assessments showed that learners were already struggling to meet the minimum required proficiency in reading, according to Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chair of the Committee on Basic Education.

He pressed the need for programs and interventions that would improve Filipino learners' proficiency in reading.

'Ang pagbabasa ay isa sa mga pundasyon na dapat nating pagtibayin sa ating mga kabataan at mag-aaral. Ngayon natin higit na kinakailangang tutukan ang kanilang pagbabasa, lalo na't pinalala ng pandemya ang problema sa ating sektor ng edukasyon (Reading is one of the youth's foundationS that should be strengthened. More than ever, we should focus on that area as education suffered a lot since the pandemic broke out),' Gatchalian said in a news release on Saturday.

In the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Philippines scored lowest in Reading out of 79 countries.

The PISA further showed that only one in five Filipino learners aged 15 achieved at least the minimum proficiency level in Overall Reading Literacy.

The 2019 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics, on the other hand, said only 10 percent of the country's Grade 5 learners achieved the minimum proficiency at the end of primary education.

The World Bank estimated that as of June, learning poverty in the Philippines is at 90.9 percent.

Learning poverty is defined as the percentage of 10-year-old children who cannot read or understand a simple story.

Gatchalian's Senate Bill 150 or the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Act seeks to institute a nationwide learning recovery program that will include well-systematized tutorial sessions and well-designed remediation plans.

The proposed ARAL Program will prioritize reading to develop...