THE PHILIPPINE Business for Education (PBEd) warns that current educational reforms are “dangerously inadequate,” with near-universal failure of Grade 12 students to reach proficiency in the National Achievement Test (NAT).
To address the crisis, PBEd recommended an immediate shift toward strengthening foundational skills, improving teacher quality, addressing infrastructure shortages, and combating child malnutrition is essential.
PBEd is a nonprofit, business-led education advocacy organization that works to improve the quality of education in the Philippines and better align it with the country’s workforce and economic development needs.
The Philippine education system is facing a crisis as nearly all Grade 12 students fall below proficiency levels in national assessments, prompting calls for urgent, targeted reforms, according to PBEd.
Immediate corrective actions—including “Foundations First” literacy programs, teacher support, infrastructure partnerships, and improved nutrition—are essential to reverse this trend and secure national productivity.
Addressing the Philippine education crisis requires urgent, structural reforms including insulating governance from political cycles, decentralizing decision-making, bridging funding gaps, and enhancing teacher quality.
Key proposals focus on improving early childhood nutrition, enforcing foundational literacy, and utilizing public-private partnerships to overcome infrastructure backlogs.
According to PBEd, 99.53% of Grade 12 students failed to reach the proficiency benchmark in core competencies in the 2024 National Achievement Test (NAT).
Released in PBEd’s 2026 State of Philippine Education Report, titled “Turning Point: A Decade of Necessary Reforms,” the findings underscore an alarming, deep-seated learning crisis that worsens as students advance through school.
The Department of Education (DepEd) data cited by PBEd reveals that only 0.47% of senior high school examinees achieved a “proficient” or “highly proficient” rating.
The vast majority fell into categories signifying inadequate mastery of core 21st-century skills:
● Low Emerging: 65.60%
● High Emerging: 27.39%
● Developing: 6.54%
● Proficient: 0.45%
● Highly Proficient: 0.02%
PBEd also highlighted a catastrophic drop in proficiency as students grow older. While Grade 3 students posted a 30.52% proficiency rate, that metric plummets to just 0.47% by Grade 12.
This demonstrates that the education system failed to build foundational knowledge, leaving older students severely unequipped.
Despite decades of systemic overhauls—including the implementation of the K-12 program—student performance and teaching quality continue to slide.
PBEd warned that the current pace of education reform is “dangerously inadequate”.
As an organization led by top business leaders, PBEd focuses heavily on the widening gap between graduation and employment.
Grade 12 graduates are finishing senior high school without the critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills required by modern workplaces.
The group likewise emphasized that poor test scores do not happen in a vacuum. The learning crisis is tied directly to poor teacher training, an unaddressed 165,000 classroom backlog, and a 23.6% childhood stunting rate that compromises cognitive development.
PBEd, alongside recommendations from Edcom 2, asserts that “band-aid solutions cannot solve a generational crisis.” They are pushing for:
● A 10-Year National Education and Workforce Development Plan to synchronize efforts between the government, industry, and academia.
● Radical Investment Increases, supporting the redirection of state funds to push the education budget to ₱1.224 trillion (about 4% of GDP) to meet UNESCO standards.
● A Total Overhaul of Teacher Training to reverse the trend where over half of local educator-training institutions perform poorly in professional licensure exams.
In its 2026 State of Philippine Education Report released Monday, PBEd cited DepEd data showing only 0.47% of Grade 12 examinees were classified as proficient or highly proficient, while 99.53% fell below those levels.
PBEd said the results underscore persistent learning gaps despite education reforms introduced in recent years.
“Education reform cannot simply be a program that matures five or 10 years from now. A child gets only one First Grade, only one Sixth Grade, and only one chance to graduate from high school prepared for what comes next,” PBEd Chairman Ramon del Rosario Jr. said during the report’s launch in Makati City.
The group warned that poor learning outcomes extend beyond the education sector, affecting the country’s workforce and long-term economic competitiveness.
While acknowledging ongoing government initiatives such as the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program and curriculum reforms, PBEd said sustained implementation and policy continuity are essential to improving learning outcomes.
The group urged the government, educators, local governments, and the private sector to work together to ensure education reforms are sustained beyond political administrations, saying another generation of Filipino learners cannot afford to be left behind.