Nearly half of Davao Region students struggle to read, says EDCOM 2

Students look for their room assignment as classes open for the new school year at an elementary school in Manila on June 8, 2026.

AFP / Jam Sta Rosa

MANILA, Philippines — Nearly half of students assessed in the Davao Region at the start of the school year in June were classified as struggling readers, according to a Department of Education assessment.

A congressional education commission shared its analysis of the findings Tuesday, October 27, as it called on local governments to help close the region's literacy gaps.

Citing DepEd's Comprehensive Rapid Literacy Assessment (CRLA), the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) said 48% of learners in Region XI and 45 percent in Davao City fell into the test's two lowest reading levels at the beginning of school year 2026-2027. 

Struggling readers refer to students classified as "emerging readers" — students who are still trying to master basic foundational literacy skills like recognizing letters, connecting sounds, and forming simple words.

DepEd's rapid literacy assessment splits emerging readers into two specific sublevels: "low emerging and high emerging." Under DepEd guidelines, students at the "low-emerging" level have limited mastery of letters and their sounds, while those at the "high-emerging" level recognize most letters but still struggle to decode words at their grade level.

Municipality- and city-level results from the previous school year show variations in reading skills. 

For instance, in Talaingod, Davao del Norte, 49.6% of students in Grades 1 to 3, or 1,184 children, were still struggling readers in the end-of-year assessment in March, about twice the rate of any other municipality in the region.

"The learning crisis did not happen overnight, it has compounded over the years," EDCOM 2 Executive Director Karol Mark Yee said in a statement. "Every child who continues to struggle with reading needs timely support. Otherwise, they risk moving up to the next grade without fully understanding their lessons."

The Davao results appear to track with the overall nationwide data. EDCOM 2 said 45% of students assessed nationwide at the start of the current school year were struggling readers. 

The data also shows reading proficiency further thinning out as students move up levels, from 30.52% in Grade 3 to 19.56% in Grade 6, 0.74% in Grade 10 and 0.40% in Grade 12, or roughly one in every 250 students in the final year of high school.

DepEd said in May that the number of struggling readers across all grade levels fell from 6.7 million at the start of school year 2025-2026 to 2.2 million by its end, which it credited to intensified learning recovery programs. 

In September, the Philippines posted its best performance to date in reading, science and math, though it continues to fall below the global average.

All 10 school divisions with the highest shares of struggling readers at the start of the last school year were in Mindanao, according to EDCOM 2 in March.

EDCOM 2 has pressed local executives to take a larger role in basic education. 

In March, it released a playbook to help mayors manage schooling in their towns, the same document that ranked school divisions by their share of struggling readers.