Learning Among 15-Year-Olds in the Philippines and the Covid-19 Pandemic: Insights from the 2022 Pisa

Using the recently released 2022 PISA dataset in combination with the 2018 PISA dataset, this study examines how the COVID-19 pandemic could have impacted the learnings of school-attending 15-year-olds in the country, whether in terms of actual learning losses or the opportunity cost of learning more. Using both cross-tabulations and regression analysis, the study finds heterogenous changes in learning outcomes before and after the pandemic, with the negative changes higher for some subgroups (males, public school students, those without access to their own digital device) compared with others. The results of the study points to potential priority groups for remedial intervention to make up for pandemic learning losses – public school males, for example – already behind before the pandemic and left further behind after the pandemic, those with little access to real-time lessons by a school teacher through video conferencing and those without access to digital devices during the school closures, and those at the bottom of the socioeconomic strata. The study discusses some policy interventions to facilitate remedial catch-up to make up for pandemic learning losses as well as the general deficiency in the proficiency of Filipino students even before the pandemic.