The Department of Education (DepEd) on Tuesday renewed its call for lawmakers to allocate funds for the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program anew to sustain recent gains in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

The Philippines hit its strongest performance since it joined PISA in 2018, emerging as the fastest-improving education system in reading in the world under the 2025 PISA.

“These latest PISA gains are an encouraging checkpoint, not the finish line. They prove that system-wide progress is possible, but they also highlight why sustained funding and structured interventions like ARAL remain non-negotiable,” Education Secretary Sonny Angara said in a statement.

Remediation efforts under the ARAL program are seen as crucial in the latest learning recovery progress, as well as performance improvement under PISA.

Under ARAL, struggling readers have dropped to 2.2 million from 6.7 million nationwide during School Year 2025-2026.

Grade-level readiness has also been boosted to 5.8 million learners from 3.3 million learners.

To sustain these gains, the DepEd has earlier requested a PHP16.03 billion supplemental funding for Learning Recovery, with a substantial allocation for the ARAL Program.

These cover expenses for remediation consultations, learning resources, training of DepEd tutors, ARAL Summer Program, external tutors’ compensation, and teaching overload honoraria.

To date, the ARAL program has zero allocation under the proposed 2027 National Expenditure Program.

Besides this, the DepEd is also calling for a budget boost to cover 3.69 million learners, including all Kindergarten, Grade 1, and all wasted and severely wasted learners from Grade 2 onwards, under the School-Based Feeding Program (SBFP); as well as to prevent school violence incidents through intensifying school safety efforts in all public schools nationwide. (PNA)