Press Release

Office of Deputy Speaker and Batangas Rep. Ralph G. Recto

11 September 2022

Ranked last in reading, PH should end moratorium in building school libraries

Government should resume building school libraries to improve student reading comprehension of which the Philippines ranked last among 79 countries tested in 2018, House Deputy Speaker Ralph Recto said today.

“We should end the moratorium in building new libraries. A school without one is like a swimming pool without water,” Recto said.

Library construction, he said, has taken “a long vacation from the national budget as a distinct program with specific funding.” 

In 2006, government allocated P120 million to build 60 library hubs and 12 big learning resource centers, Recto said.

The program was still highlighted in the 2014 budget of DepEd but was no longer in the years that followed, Recto recalled.

The “remedial measure,” he said, can be instituted in next year’s national budget by increasing the DepEd’s proposed new buildings fund of P5.91 billion which is only enough for 2,379 new classrooms.

“Kung totoong 900,000 enrollees ang bagong lipat from private to public schools, ‘yan pa lang 22,500 dagdag na rooms na ang kailangan,” Recto said. 

“Maglaan tayo ng pondo para sa libraries sa 2023 budget. It’s time to turn the page and reverse the neglect of this vital school facility,” Recto said

The Philippines had the lowest test scores in reading comprehension among 79 countries which participated in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Like all the things it devastated, the pandemic worsened the country’s “learning poverty,” with less than 15 percent of schoolchildren able to read simple texts, in large part due to school closures, the United Nations Children’s Fund reported.

This should jolt all of us into intensifying our efforts to make pupils read and develop the fondness for books that do not only inform, but also prepare young minds to acquire deeper knowledge on science, mathematics, economics and other fields, Recto said.

“Let’s make sure that our young people will fall in love with books. And building book depots and reading centers could be the start of their beautiful relationship with reading,” he said.

“If we want our kids to read, read, read, we should build, build, build libraries,” Recto said.

Recto said school libraries should have free wi-fi so that students can tap the “online universe of reading materials waiting to be explored by curious minds.”