PASSAGE OF ARAL PROGRAM ACT URGED

The passage of the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program Act would help recover students’ learning losses during the pandemic and raise the quality of education in the country.

According to the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC), the proposed bill, which is included in LEDAC's list of 20 priority bills, should be passed by June.

The ARAL Program Bill seeks to establish a national learning intervention program with the two-fold objective of helping learners catch up with the required standard of their respective grade levels while accelerating the recovery of the learning losses incurred during the pandemic.

LEDAC serves as a consultative and advisory body to President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on programs and policies essential to attaining the country’s socioeconomic goals.

Improving access to quality education is one of the priorities included in the Philippine Development Report 2023.

Officials said no less than fundamental transformation is required in our education sector to address longstanding issues that have resulted in low productivity and job mismatches for our workers.

Considering the pace of technological developments, students need all the support they can get – not just to regain lost ground, but also so that they can adapt to the emergence of new tools in an increasingly complex world, officials added.

There is a need to immediately implement the needed interventions to allow students to participate and benefit from the envisioned socioeconomic transformation.

-oOoThe author is a Teacher II at San Antonio Elementary School