As part of the national celebration of National Reading Month in November, I would like to highlight the need to improve the reading skills of learners to address the education crisis in the country.

Following the signing of the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning Program (Aral) Act (Republic Act 12028), I am counting on the deployment of well-systematized tutoring sessions and well-organized intervention plans to boost literacy and improve learners’ reading skills. The legislation, which I authored and sponsored, establishes the Aral Program to provide a national learning intervention program that will ensure mastery of essential skills and compensate for learning loss.

The Aral program covers the essential learning skills of the K-12 Core Curriculum, specifically reading and math in grades 1-10, and science in grades 3-10 . The program also aims to strengthen the literacy and numeracy skills of kindergarten students to build on their foundational skills.

To recall, the results of the 2022 Agenda for International Student Assessment showed that the Philippines ranked 76th out of 81 countries in reading. The results of the three-year assessment also revealed that 76 percent of the country’s 15-year-old learners did not achieve the minimum level of reading proficiency.

During bansa education training, you will have to deal with daily life and learn to eat things. When implementing the Aral program and the country’s unique programming for the trip, you will learn how to create matibay programs in the depths of the country.

I am also pushing to institutionalize the celebration of National Reading Month in November. The National Reading Month Act (Senate Bill 475), which I introduced, aims to organize reading activities to instill the culture of reading among basic education learners and their communities .