PH urged to invest ‘big time’ in nat’l academic recovery program
SAYING that learning “losses” cost the country “trillions of pesos” in terms of productivity due to a lack of face-to-face classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian reiterated the urgent need to invest in the implementation of a nationwide program for academic recovery.
Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, in a Senate panel hearing on Senate Bill (SB) No. 150 or the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program Act – and proposed the “ARAL Program” as the national core strategy for allowing learners to catch up with the rest of the world despite their learning loss.
The proposed program will include well-systematized tutorial sessions and well-designed remediation plans.
Based on estimates by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), 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’s initial proposal is to allocate P20 billion. While the amount seems big, Gatchalian emphasized that this amount is only 0.18% of the looming productivity losses.
“Twenty billion pesos is only 0.18% of the potential productivity losses for the next 40 years. So to avert that, 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,” said Gatchalian, who called for a massive academic recovery program to avert a much worse number in learning assessments, which was already dismal even before the pandemic.
Pre-pandemic, the World Bank estimates that learning poverty in the Philippines was 90.5%, or nine children out of ten aged 10 are unable to read or understand a simple story.
Gatchalian pointed out that based on the results of large-scale international assessments, learners are failing to master basic competencies and lagging behind their peers abroad.
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.
The said proposal 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.
