It’s not fake news; it’s official. In December 2019, Malacañang said the “poor reading comprehension of Filipino students is a reality.”

In a 2018 global survey called Program for International Assessment (PISA) among 600,000 students worldwide, Filipino students around the age of 15 got a rating of 340 points in reading comprehension, lower than the average of 487 points. Consequently, in the said study, the Philippines ranked last among 79 countries.