The Department of Education (DepEd) has pledged to address “mass promotion,” the practice of advancing unqualified students to the next grade despite the continued decline in Filipino pupils’ skills.
Speaking to the media after an event, DepEd Secretary Sonny Angara said his office would re-evaluate its grade transmutation matrix, which converts students’ raw scores into passing grades.
“We have to study this because once a student reaches college entrance exams and international assessments, there’s no such thing as transmutation (of grades) so we have to be consistent throughout the education system, especially on our grading system,” he said.
Education authorities will also review other practices that may have contributed to students being promoted despite lacking the required skills and competencies.
No formal policy on mass promotion
However, Angara said there was no formal policy on mass promotion, attributing the situation to “unintended policies” that may have allowed students to advance to the next grade.
He cited DepEd Order No. 8, which sets grading rules for the K-12 curriculum, as well as a 2015 order that may have resulted in students being promoted despite not meeting academic standards.
Angara also pointed to pressure on teachers and what he described as “human nature,” noting that educators sometimes become tutors for students who fail a subject.
“There are cases wherein a teacher would also be the student’s tutor once that student fails. Of course, the human nature of the teacher is to no longer fail the student.”
Mass promotion entrenched in school system
His remarks followed a report by the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom) 2, which found that “de facto mass promotion” is deeply entrenched in the public school system.
In its final report titled “Turning Point: A Decade of Necessary Reforms,” Edcom 2 said students are “routinely advanced” to the next grade level despite lacking the required skills.
The commission said the current grading system weakened the diagnostic value of assessments and hindered accurate targeting of learning interventions.
“For the system as a whole, these grading practices inflate reported achievement, distort school and division level data and weaken the evidence base on which curriculum reform, learning recovery programmes and promotion policies are meant to rest,” the report said.
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Students’ proficiency on a downward trend
Edcom 2 noted that this reality is reflected in recent academic assessments, which show a steady decline in learner proficiency as students progress through grade levels.
DepEd data showed that only 30.52% of Grade 3 students read at grade level, meaning about 70% still struggle with foundational skills such as recognising letters, reading common words, understanding short passages and basic problem-solving.
The figures drop further by Grade 6, with proficiency falling by 11 percentage points to 19.56%, the Philippine Star reported.
The downward trend continues into junior and senior high school, with only 1.36% reaching at least proficient in Grade 10 and 0.4% in Grade 12.
This means that only around 14 in every 1,000 students at Grade 10 and four in every 1,000 at Grade 12 can demonstrate skills such as communicating information, problem solving, evaluating data or formulating ideas.
Calls for reform, targeted intervention
In response, Edcom 2 introduced the National Education Plan (NatPlan), a 10-year roadmap from 2026 to 2035 aimed at addressing key challenges in the education sector.
The NatPlan recommends ending mass promotion, fully implementing the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning Programme to address learning gaps from Kindergarten to Grade 10 and revising procurement rules to ensure timely delivery of textbooks.
It also calls for tackling classroom congestion and reducing teachers’ administrative burden, Rappler reported.
The commission said it hoped the reforms would help build a future-ready education system and ensure no Filipino student is left behind.
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