SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian reiterated the urgent need to invest in an education recovery program to avert the economic impact of the Covid19 pandemic resulting from productivity losses from the lack of face-to-face classes.

Gatchalian discussed the consequences of shutting down schools during the Senate panel hearing on Senate Bill 150 or the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning or ARAL Program Act.

The chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education proposed the ARAL Program to allow Filipino learners to catch up with the rest of the world. The program will include well-systematized tutorial sessions and well-designed remediation plans.

Based on estimates by the National Economic and Development Authority, the lack of face-to-face classes for a year will result in P10.8 trillion in productivity losses over the next 40 years.

To implement the ARAL Program, Gatchalian proposed a budget of P20 billion. The amount, he said, is only 0.18% of the looming productivity losses.

“P20 billion is actually quite cheap to spend on an academic recovery program. On the other side, if you don’t do anything, we lose P10 trillion right away,” the senator said.

“If we don’t do a massive academic recovery program, we will see a much worse number for our assessments because during pre-pandemic it was already dismal,” Gatchalian added.

The proposed ARAL program targets learners who did not enroll for School Year 2020-2021, those who are lagging academically, and those who are at and marginally above the minimum level of mastery required in Language, Mathematics, and Science.

It will cover the most essential learning competencies under Language and Mathematics for Grades 1 to 10, and Science for Grades 3 to 10. For Kindergarten learners, literacy and numeracy competencies will be given focus to build on their foundational competencies.