New law gives DepEd teaching flexibility

MANILA, Philippines — A measure giving the Department of Education (DepEd) more flexibility in determining the most effective teaching methods for the basic education curriculum has lapsed into law.

Republic Act 12322, which amended the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, became a law without President Marcos’ signature on Aug. 2.

The new law requires a review of the curriculum and approach at least once every five years to determine their relevance and effectiveness in achieving the educational goals.

The review will be undertaken following a systematic curriculum development process determined by the DepEd.

The law will take effect 15 days after its publication in the Official Gazette or in a newspaper of general circulation.

DepEd launches ‘ARAL TutorKo’

Meanwhile, DepEd launched the web-based tutoring management platform “ARAL TutorKo,” which aims to support struggling learners.

Education Secretary Sonny Angara introduced on Wednesday the ARAL TutorKo that would make tutor application, onboarding, deployment, attendance monitoring and session tracking more efficient under the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning program.

The platform will provide targeted learning interventions for learners who need additional support in foundational literacy and numeracy.

It will also help streamline tutor recruitment, screening, onboarding, lesson management, learner grouping, scheduling, attendance tracking, daily time record submission and report generation.

Through dashboards and monitoring tools, TutorKo is expected to support real-time tracking of tutoring sessions, improve coordination across schools and strengthen data-driven decision-making for ARAL implementation.

The DepEd recorded 6.7 million struggling learners for academic year 2025-2026. By the end of the school year, 4.5 million learners improved their reading proficiency with the support of 442,906 ARAL tutors nationwide.