SENATE President Sherwin Gatchalian said the Philippines’ improved performance in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows that education reforms are moving in the right direction, as he vowed to push for continued funding for learning recovery programs.

Gatchalian identified the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program as a key intervention in addressing learning gaps among Filipino students.

He cited an impact evaluation by Youth Impact, conducted in partnership with the Department of Education and the World Bank, which found that the program resulted in 4.5 million fewer struggling readers during School Year 2025–2026.

Despite receiving ₱8.9 billion in funding this year, however, the ARAL Program has no allocation under the proposed 2027 National Expenditure Program.

Gatchalian said he would push for the restoration of its funding during the budget deliberations.

The Senate President also expressed optimism that student achievement would continue to improve following the enactment of Republic Act No. 12322, which removed the mandatory use of the spiral progression approach and gave the DepEd greater flexibility in implementing the basic education curriculum.

“Now that the PISA results show our education reforms are heading in the right direction, we will continue to support and strengthen programs that will further improve the abilities of our learners,” Gatchalian said.