Senator Loren Legarda on Monday, August 10 hailed the passage of Republic Act No. 12322 which now gives the Department of Education (DepEd) the flexibility to choose the curricular approach that are most effective for Filipino learners.

Legarda said the new law now offers hope that classrooms will be shaped by methods that are responsive to the realities, matching the needs of learners and the strengths of educators.

“This law provides a clear direction for learning. We are empowering DepEd to identify and employ the most appropriate and effective methods to ensure the development of every student's knowledge and skills at every level of their education,” said Legarda, principal author of the law.

“It is not enough for a child to simply go through a lesson repeatedly. We must ensure that they understand it and are able to apply it before moving on to the next level,” she added.

The senator noted that for years, students and teachers have faced the consequences of a curriculum marked by repeated competencies, insufficient depth, and persistent gaps in mastery.

With the new law, which amends Section 5 of the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013,

DepEd is now allowed to employ the approach it deems most effective in ensuring that learners master the required knowledge and skills after each level.

Because under the previous law, schools are required to use spiral progression, under which concepts are introduced at an early grades and revisited in succeeding grade levels with increasing depth and complexity.

Under Republic Act No. 12322, this statutory requirement is removed, thus allowing curriculum design to be guided instead by evidence, subject-specific needs, and actual classroom conditions, with mastery of learning as the primary measure of effectiveness.

She clarified that the law does not prohibit the use of spiral progression. Rather, it allows DepEd to retain, modify, or replace the approach depending on how well it responds to the needs of particular subjects, grade levels, and learning contexts.

Legarda pointed out that based on the findings of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II), repetition across grade levels contributed to serious gaps in foundational knowledge and poor retention among learners.

The EDCOM II report also found that a rigid and centralized framework failed to respond to varied learning contexts, including the Alternative Learning System (ALS) and Indigenous Peoples (IP) Education.

The Commission also concluded that the system had not ensured cumulative learning, with teachers forced to teach several subject areas instead of focusing on their fields of expertise, particularly in critical subjects such as Science and Mathematics, leaving classrooms congested and mastery elusive.

“When there are too many competencies to cover and a teacher is handling a subject outside their area of ​​specialization, the time available to thoroughly explain and master each lesson is reduced,” the lawmaker noted.

“Under this law, the curriculum, teaching methods, and the capabilities of our teachers can be better aligned,” Legarda stressed.