Understanding the Philippine Learning Crisis: From 1990 to the Present

Abstract

This study argues that the protracted learning crisis in the Philippines, the deficiency in basic literacy and numeracy is an accumulated result of thirty years of systemic failure and not a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the analysis of the major policies and reforms in education from 1990 to the present, this paper has identified three critical fragments that sustained the steady decline in the quality of Philippine education: the implementation gap of policy, the structural gap of pedagogy, and the access gap of infrastructure. Empirical data from international large-scale assessments, specifically the 2018 and 2022 PISA results, are utilized to support the failure of hardware-centric modernization programs that have neglected to integrate internet connectivity and teacher readiness. Grounded in the Thomistic theory of learning, the paper problematizes the shift toward independent, modular learning, in a situation characterized by instructional poverty and the outsourcing of educational responsibility to the family. This research concludes with an evidence-based proposal toward personalized, decolonized instructional frameworks to span the divide between policies, as theories, and the real conditions in classrooms.