Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said there is an urgent need for the government to implement a nationwide academic recovery program in order to avert school closures as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The senator said the lack of face-to-face classes has resulted to trillions of pesos in productivity losses due to the economic consequences of schools shutting down.

In a Senate panel hearing on Senate Bill No. 150 or the proposed Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program Act, Gatchalian said there is a need to implement a national core strategy to allow learners to catch up with the rest of the world despite their learning loss.

The Senate Committee on Basic Education chair said the proposed program will include well-systematized tutorial sessions and well-designed remediation plans.

Citing estimates by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), the lawmaker said the lack of face-to-face classes for a year will result in P10.8-trillion in productivity losses over the next 40 years.

Gatchalian said that while his initial proposal of a P20-billion allocation for the implementation of the ARAL program, the amount is small compared to the projected productivity losses.

“Twenty billion pesos (P20-billion) is only 0.18% of the potential productivity losses for the next 40 years. So to avert that, P20 billion is actually quite cheap to spend on an academic recovery program. On the other side, if you don’t do anything, we lose P10-trillion right away,” said Gatchalian.

“If we don’t do a massive academic recovery program, we will see a much worse number for our assessments because during pre-pandemic it was already dismal,” he added.

The measure, he said, will target learners who did not enroll for School Year 2020-2021, those who are lagging academically, and those who are at and marginally above the minimum level of mastery required in Language, Mathematics, and Science.

The bill will also cover the most essential learning competencies under Language and Mathematics for Grades 1 to 10, and Science for Grades 3 to 10. For Kindergarten learners, literacy and numeracy competencies will be given focus to build on their foundational competencies.