DepEd Order No. 45: The acid test of Angara’s intent to stop mass promotion

Responding to claims linking the alleged mass promotion policy of the Department of Education (DepEd) to the staggering incidence of functionally illiterate high school graduates reported by the Philippine Statistics Authority, Education Secretary Juan Edgardo Angara clarified that the agency does not have a policy of automatically passing learners. However, he admitted that there are features in the DepEd system that may be putting silent pressure on schools and teachers to pass students regardless of performance. He vowed to take corrective action.

While Angara may be correct that there is no mass promotion policy, he must also acknowledge that DepEd could have prevented the unmitigated disaster of the 18.9 million functionally illiterate junior and senior high school graduates, but is adamantly refusing to enforce it. I am referring to DepEd Order, No. 45 s. 2002, which as worded in DepEd Memorandum No. 324, s. 2004, “enforces the policy that every child should be a reader by Grade 3 and that no pupil shall be promoted to the next higher grade unless he/she manifests mastery of the basic literacy skills.” Had DepEd been applying the policy, no learner would have reached Grade 10, much less Grade 12 still functionally illiterate. Already basically literate by Grade 3, there is more than ample time for learners to transition to functional literacy before they graduate from junior high school, let alone senior high school.

DepEd itself agrees with this conclusion because the K-12 Curriculum provides that a learner should be basically literate by Grade 3 and functionally literate by Grade 6.

The failure to enforce DO 45, s. 2002, is deliberate. In 2006, then Secretary Jesli Lapus had implicitly admitted that one reason for the declining literacy at the time was the non-implementation of the order. In his presentation of the proposed 2007 DepEd budget, Lapus said the implementation of the “no promotion of nonreaders beyond Grade 3” policy should be among the measures to build foundational skills “for learning how to learn” among Grades 1 to 3 pupils (“Education For All: A Functionally Literate Philippines”).

But for unknown reasons, Lapus himself did not enforce the order and neither did former secretaries Armin Luistro, Leonor Briones, and Sara Duterte.

From 2018 to 2024, DepEd-Cordillera Administrative Region (under Regional Memorandum No. 013.2020); DepEd-Region 10 (Regional Memorandum No. 153, s. 2020); DepEd-Cabuyao City Schools Division (Memorandum No. 537, s. 2023); DepEd-Batangas Schools Division (Memorandum No. 013, s. 2024); and DepEd-Dagupan City Schools Division (Memorandum No. 99, s. 2024) posted online their “No Read, No Move” policies, citing DO 45, s. 2002 as the basis.

The DepEd central office has indirectly confirmed the active status of DO 45, s. 2002 when it included in DO 12, s. 2025, the administration of the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) reading assessment test among the school activities for schoolyear 2025-2026 onward. Per DepEd Memorandum No. 324, s. 2004, the Phil-IRI and DO 45, s. 2002 are both supporting mechanisms of the “Every Child a Reader” program, an old reading program of DepEd.

If Angara is serious about stopping the mass promotion practice and rescuing literacy, he should order the strict implementation of DO 45, s. 2002. Otherwise, it would be clear that just like his predecessors, he also approves of mass promotion despite his big words to the contrary. He had declared that promotion must be earned and must come with real learning.

ESTANISLAO C. ALBANO JR.
casigayan@yahoo.com