As the department both seeks to cement the progress made in reading and ensure learning resources are delivered and utilized by each learner.
ARAL PROGRAM
The Department of Education is now advancing the strengthening of the implementation of the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program.
According to the evaluation conducted by Youth Impact—a global non-profit specializing in evidence-based programming and evaluation—in partnership with the World Bank, significant significant progress in reading was made in School Year (SY) 2025–2026.
During which, 4.5 million students with reading difficulties were reduced and 2.5 million students reached grade level,
After accounting for expected learning gains over a school year without ARAL, the evaluators estimate a 9 percentage-point decrease in the number of students struggling to read, which saw an additional approximately 1.37 million children lifted out of the lowest reading level.
Moreover, the same evaluation found a 4.8 percentage-point increase in the level of proficiency in reading at the appropriate grade level, equivalent to an estimated 730,000 additional students meeting this standard.
The evaluators stressed that these positive results were consistent across all regions and demonstrate the early success of the national implementation of ARAL.
To build on this initial success, Youth Impact recommended that the ARAL Program must be strengthened by allocating focused class time for basic literacy, improving the grouping of students based on their ability level, and shifting field monitoring to direct coaching of teachers rather than administrative tasks.
Moreover, the same report also emphasized the use of DepEd’s data systems to quickly deliver assistance to schools and areas in need.
“Learning recovery is not a one-off campaign—it is a commitment to building a resilient educational core,” said Education Secretary Sonny Angara. “Through the continued partnership of our teachers, tutors, and local communities, we are turning policy into real, measurable opportunities for every Filipino child. We will continue to refine these interventions to ensure early gains carry through to higher grade levels.”
The report also attributes ARAL’s success to its core methodology, which involves grouping students based on their true ability level rather than age, monitoring their progress, providing direct instruction and guidance to teachers, and providing assistance to struggling schools.
Under Republic Act No. 12028 (ARAL Program Act), the systematic remediation in reading, mathematics, and science by pairing students with public teachers, licensed para-teachers, student tutors, and trained tutors from the community nationwide were established.
Secretary Angara said the results confirm the effectiveness of focused, evidence-based learning interventions.
“When we passed the ARAL law, our goal was simple yet urgent: to ensure no learner is left behind simply because they needed more time or a different approach to master reading,” Angara added.
TRACKING OF TEXTBOOKS, TEACHERS’ MANUAL
Recently, the DepEd successfully procured all 105 target textbook titles for public elementary and secondary schools, covering successive phases of curriculum implementation from Grades 1, 4, 7, and Senior High School in 2024; Grade 3 and Grades 2, 5, and 8 in 2025; and Grades 6, 9, and 10 by 2026.
This enabled the agency to reach the target textbook title procurements for 2026 and addresses long-standing bottlenecks identified by the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II), which said that only 27 of the 88 required titles were procured by the DepEd from 2014 to 2023.
Currently, all 105 approved printed and electronic textbook titles are in the process of being procured and distributed nationwide.
In line with that, DepEd is strengthening the use of the Learning Resource Management and Information System (LRMIS) to better track textbooks and teachers’ manuals at the school level.
The said system provides a centralized learning resource database, real-time inventory visibility, standardized reporting, and automated data-driven reports from schools, Schools Division Offices, Regional Offices, to the Central Office.
Real-time school-level tracking through LRMIS is seen to help strengthen delivery monitoring and ensure that learning resources reach schools and learners who need them most.
According to Secretary Angara, the next challenge is to ensure that procured and delivered learning resources are properly tracked from national distribution to the school level, recorded, and directed to learners and teachers who need them most.
“Natapos natin ang isang malaking bottleneck sa procurement. Pero hindi doon natatapos ang trabaho. Kailangan nating makita kung nasaan na ang textbooks, ilan ang hawak ng bawat school, anong grade level at learning area ang kulang, at saan puwedeng mag-reallocate kung may sobra o buffer stock. Iyan ang inaayos natin sa LRMIS,” he said.
For the department, achieving a 1:1 textbook-to-student ratio does not end with the procurement of the right number of textbooks.
Given that enrollment varies from year to year in each school, grade level, and locality, textbooks can also be lost or damaged during use.
Hence, via the LRMIS, schools can also encode inventory data by learning resource, grade level, and learning area, which can be compared to current enrollment to identify gaps, verify deliveries, and guide the reallocation of available buffer stock.
As of August 27, 2026, 37,705 public schools, or 78 percent of all DepEd schools, have registered with LRMIS.
Meanwhile, 17,797 schools have encoded their existing textbook and teachers’ manual inventory, equivalent to approximately 37 percent of all DepEd schools and 77 percent of schools covered by the current encoding phase.
Schools have also encoded 20,520,035 learning resources into the system based on extracted regional inventory data.
“May mga lugar na naapektuhan ang encoding dahil sa masamang panahon, at inuuna natin ang safety at operasyon ng schools. Pero tuloy ang rollout,” noted Angara. “Habang mas maraming schools ang nag-e-encode, mas malinaw nating makikita kung saan kulang, saan sobra, at saan kailangang maglipat o magdagdag ng learning resources.”
According to the DepEd, LRMIS addresses the need for more granular and actionable textbook data and emphasized that actual numbers by school, grade level, and learning area need to be seen compared to current enrollment.
LRMIS is currently in Phase 1, which covers school registration and baseline inventory of textbooks and teachers’ manuals.
In the succeeding phase, it will provide real-time inventory data in conjunction with current enrollment, allow for reallocation of textbooks if necessary, support reporting of damaged textbooks and teachers’ manuals for replacement, and provide standardized reports based on the needs of each office.
