Philippines only country where rich-poor gap in reading gains widened in PISA 2025

MANILA, Philippines — Filipino students of every background achieved better reading scores in the 2025 PISA than in 2022. But scores climbed almost three times higher among the richest demographic of students than the poorest.

The 2025 PISA results, released Tuesday, September 8, show that the Philippines was the only country in the world where the reading gap between the wealthiest and poorest students grew wider over the past three years, as elsewhere it narrowed or stayed the same.

Reading scores among the wealthiest quarter of Filipino students who took the PISA rose by 41 points from 376 to 417 between 2022 and 2025. Among the poorest, however, the improvement was only by 15 points.

This 26-point difference in both groups' reading improvements was the largest of any country with comparable data in the 2025 PISA, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which oversees the PISA.

This comes as the Philippines recorded its best PISA results since it first took the test in 2018. 

From its 2018 debut, the Philippines' reading scores have jumped by 20 points overall, the steepest improvement of any country with comparable data. 

But that national average also masks how unevenly the gains were shared, upon closer study of the reading scores and socio-economic data. 

"The socio-economic gap in reading performance decreased in 37 countries and economies... The gap increased only in the Philippines; in the remaining countries and economies, the socio-economic gap in reading did not change," the PISA 2025 report read.

Socio-economic divide

PISA is administered every three years by the OECD. It tests 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science, and asks them to complete a questionnaire about their household to come up with its own measure of students' socio-economic background.  

Students are then classified by the OECD into four socio-economic groups, or "quarters."

In most of the 91 territories that participated in PISA 2025, the socio-economic divide between the "top" and "bottom" quarter in reading has narrowed, according to the OECD.

But the OECD warned against reading this as evidence that countries are creating a fairer playing field for students. A narrowing gap could also mean wealthier students are slipping while poorer students are not significantly improving.

"A shrinking socio-economic gap does not necessarily mean a fairer system," the PISA 2025 report read. 

So what explains the gap in reading improvements in the Philippines? Did wealthier Filipino students simply pull ahead? 

Philstar.com's reading of the PISA scores shows that the Philippines was beaten by Albania in terms of reading improvement of its wealthiest quarter of students. Albania's "top" quarter of students gained a whopping 56 points in reading compared to their 2022 scores, much higher than the Philippines' 41-point improvement.

But Albania's "bottom" quarter also rose 44 points, nearly keeping pace with the reading improvements of the top quarter, so its gap barely moved. 

In the Philippines, the lowest-income group of students only increased their average reading score by 15 points, rising from 324 to 338.

Historical data. The difference in reading scores between the poorest and wealthiest Filipino students has varied throughout the country's three PISA cycles. In 2018, it stood at 88 points, narrowed to 52 in 2022, and then widened again to 78 in 2025.

This means that since the Philippines first joined in 2018, like other countries, students in its top socio-economic quarter are improving their reading skills much faster than their peers in the bottom quarter.  

ARAL program 

Education Secretary Sonny Angara sees the country's PISA 2025 performance as proof of gains in the department's reforms since 2022. Among others, it has reduced the curriculum, freed up teachers from administrative tasks, and continued running a nationwide remediation program.

Standing deficiencies in the reading skills among Filipino students, with many in early levels still reading below grade level, was "exactly what the ARAL program was made for," Angara said yesterday, during DepEd's PISA-related press conference. 

ARAL is DepEd's flagship remediation program for Kinder to Grade 10 students to catch up on reading, science and mathematics. Unlike other temporary learning intervention programs, the ARAL program was made permanent through Republic Act 12028 signed last year. 

"We will continue it. Of course, there are administrative problems, and we have to fix all of those. There are lessons to be learned from [ARAL]'s first year," Angara said in mixed English and Filipino. 

DepEd is currently seeking P9.98 billion to P15.98 billion from Congress to sustain its operations after the program was left out of the initial 2027 National Expenditure Program.