SENATOR Juan Edgardo Angara confirmed that the Second Congressional Commission on Education or EDCOM 2 has started reviewing the country’s education system.

“Over the next three years EDCOM 2 will undertake an exhaustive assessment of our country’s education system. The task at hand is heavy and critical. We currently have a learning crisis and it is precisely because of this that EDCOM 2 was created. We have to come up with reforms and these will be introduced over the course of the next three years,” Angara said.

He cited the worrying results of academic assessments in the past three years.

In 2018, Filipino students had the lowest score in reading and second to the lowest in science and mathematics out of 79 countries surveyed in the Programme for International Student Assessment.

The following year, the Philippines ranked last for Grade 4 mathematics and science in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, which assessed academic performance in 58 countries.

In the 2019 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics study across 6 ASEAN members, Filipino Grade 5 students underperformed in almost all the metrics utilized.

In November 2021, the World Bank reported that 90 percent of Filipino ten-year-olds were possibly thrust into learning poverty because of the pandemic, such that they do not know how to read and understand a simple passage of text.

“The establishment of EDCOM 2 was prompted by these alarming developments and our work in the Commission will take these findings into consideration when we come up with policy and legislative reforms to improve the performance of our education system,” Angara said.

EDCOM 2 was established through Republic Act 11899, which lapsed into law on July 23, 2022.