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Cristina Chi - Philstar.com
December 17, 2025 | 12:14pm
MANILA, Philippines — Students in the Philippines have made slight gains in mathematics but have shown no real progress in reading over the past five years, according to a major regional assessment released in December, with the results pointing to widening gaps between strong and struggling learners.
The Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) 2024 report found that the Philippines’ average reading score in 2024 — 289.5 points — was statistically unchanged from its 2019 result of 287.7. More than a quarter of Grade 5 students tested remained at very low proficiency levels, meaning they struggled to understand even simple texts.
At the same time, mathematics scores improved. The national average rose by 4.9 points, from 287.9 in 2019 to 292.8 in 2024, a change the SEA-PLM report classifies as significant.
SEA-PLM is a regional assessment program designed specifically by and for Southeast Asian countries to measure the learning outcomes of primary school students. It specifically tests Grade 5 students because by this level, students are expected to have mastered the foundational skills and move from "learning to read" to "reading to learn."
Why this matters. The controversial World Bank assessment that made headlines during the pandemic (stating that 9 in 10 Filipino children cannot fully understand a simple text) was based on the SEA-PLM 2019 data.
The difference is that for this cycle of the SEA-PLM test, the minimum proficiency for reading was adjusted from the highest "band 6 and above" to band 5.
Gains at the top, stagnation at the bottom
In reading, the share of students who met the minimum proficiency level (band 5) rose to 27% in 2024, up from 22% five years earlier. The proportion of highly proficient readers — those in the top bands — also increased, from 10% to 14%.
However, the gains were not across the board. The percentage of students in the lowest reading bands stayed fixed at 27% between 2019 and 2024. The report notes that this shift — improvement among higher-performing students without a similar improvement at the bottom — signals a wider spread of scores and growing inequality in learning opportunities.
A closer look at the data shows that half of Filipino Grade 5 students still could not understand simple written texts in 2024, according to the assessment.
The SEA-PLM reading proficiency scale defines band 4 as the level where children "can understand simple texts" that contain some information outside their personal experience. They can make "plausible interpretations of information in a text."
The data reveal that 52% of students in the Philippines fell below the band 4 proficiency threshold. Instead, these students remain in lower proficiency tiers: 25% are classified in band 3, where they can read fluently but are only beginning to engage with meaning, while 27% sit at band 2 or below, demonstrating only "emerging" skills such as identifying basic relationships between words.
There is a slight silver lining in mathematics, but overall, the trend remains the same. While the share of students meeting minimum proficiency jumped sharply, to 46% in 2024 from 35% in 2019, the proportion of children in the lowest proficiency bands barely changed. Highly proficient math students rose to 26%, from 17% five years earlier.
Poverty, language and textbooks matter
The report identified socioeconomic status as one of the strongest drivers of learning differences in the Philippines among the six participating countries.
The performance gap in reading between students from the poorest and wealthiest households widened to 34.5 points in 2024, up from 29.7 points in 2019 — a difference the report equates to roughly two years of learning.
Language also emerged as a sharper dividing line. Only one in ten Grade 5 students said English — the main language of the test — was the language they spoke most often at home. Unlike in 2019, students who spoke English at home in 2024 scored higher on average in both reading and mathematics than those who spoke other languages.
The findings come in the same year the Philippines suspended its mother-tongue-based multilingual education program, shifting early instruction to Filipino and English. Now, local languages serve only as an option for teachers.
The report also shows that from 2019 to 2024 — years when schools were hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and DepEd experienced a change in leadership from former Secretary Leonor Briones to Vice President Sara Duterte — access to basic learning materials deteriorated.
The share of Grade 5 students who had their own reading textbook dropped sharply, to 52% in 2024 from 92% in 2019. In 2024, 7% of students had no reading textbook at all, while 19% shared one with two or more classmates.
The Philippines was the only country in the SEA-PLM study where having one textbook per child remained strongly associated with higher scores in both reading and mathematics, even after accounting for students’ socioeconomic backgrounds.
A system still recovering
The assessment covered 5,070 Grade 5 students from 156 schools and reflects learning outcomes for children who spent their early grades during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sixty-eight percent of students attended schools that were physically closed for more than six months between 2020 and 2022, one of the longest periods of school closure globally.
While the report said the length of school closures alone did not explain score differences within the Philippines, it noted persistent constraints in school capacity. Three-quarters of students were enrolled in schools where principals reported severe shortages in digital technology for instruction.
The findings come as DepEd continues to roll out a new curriculum for basic education and implements a national learning recovery program that targets basic reading and mathematics skills.
