CARTOON BY: AARON PAUL C. CARIL
EDITORIAL
Business as usual—or a better SY 2026–2027?
By August 10, classes at every level are in session, and School Year 2026–2027 is no longer a promise on a calendar but a daily test of the nation’s priorities. Public basic education formally opened on June 8 with a major calendar reform: 201 class days organized into three grading terms. It is often called a “trimester,” but DepEd is explicit that it is not a trimester system; the subjects and curriculum remain, while the old four-quarter calendar is reorganized into three longer terms. The gates are open, the bells have rung, and this reform must now prove that it can produce better learning—not merely a new timetable.
Yet many learners have returned to a system short of physical room. The Department of Education itself puts the nationwide deficit at about 165,000 classrooms—a gap that produces congestion, shifting schedules and reduced teaching time. Government has mobilized funds and widened implementation to local governments, public-private partnerships, leased facilities and prefabricated learning spaces. These are practical steps, but announcements are not classrooms: progress must be measured in safe, completed and actually occupied learning spaces, especially in fast-growing and geographically isolated communities.
The deeper shortage, however, is not only concrete and chairs but mastery. In PISA 2022, Filipino 15-year-olds averaged 355 in mathematics and 347 in reading, far below OECD averages of 472 and 476; only 16 percent reached at least baseline proficiency in mathematics. The World Bank’s learning-poverty work and UNICEF’s education data likewise show that most Filipino ten-year-olds cannot read and understand a simple age-appropriate text. A learner promoted without foundational literacy and numeracy does not leave the deficit behind; the deficit travels with the learner.
That is how a basic-education crisis reaches college. Higher education cannot reliably cultivate analysis, research and professional competence while reteaching comprehension, arithmetic and academic writing that should already be secure. Congressional policy research on PISA has identified weak investment in foundational learning and excessive centralization as binding constraints; the consequence is cumulative, not confined to one grade. Universities may offer remedial courses, but remediation should be a bridge for exceptional need—not a permanent second foundation for an entire system.
The reform package deserves a fair test. Each term now has a longer instructional block, with school activities arranged to reduce interruptions; an opening block at the start of the year covers learner profiling, assessment and school readiness; and end-of-term blocks are reserved for academic intervention, learning consolidation and teacher development. Scheduled intervals also give teachers time for lesson planning, assessment and professional work, while the structure is intended to reinforce the Academic Recovery for Accessible Learning program. Alongside this calendar change, the Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum is being implemented in all senior high schools, streamlining congested core subjects and offering clearer Academic and Technical-Professional pathways toward college, employment, entrepreneurship and skills certification. These reforms respond to real weaknesses—but they cannot substitute for classrooms, competent implementation or sustained learner support.
A better SY 2026–2027 therefore requires visible delivery: publish classroom targets and completion rates; guarantee usable books, connectivity, water and sanitation; expand feeding and early-childhood programs; protect teachers’ instructional time; diagnose every learner’s reading and numeracy level; and fund intensive, evidence-tested recovery with transparent results. The three-term reform can protect longer stretches of instruction and create defined periods for remediation, but only competent execution can turn reorganized time into learning. With the school year now in full swing, the question is unavoidable: Business as usual—or a better SY 2026–2027?