Reforming Philippine Basic Education Through the Matatag K–10 Curriculum

      Since the mid-1990s, the Philippine education system has struggled with a serious literacy problem. According to the World Bank (2022), over 90% of Filipino children aged 10 have difficulty understanding and cannot read age-appropriate texts. The educational crisis led the Philippine Department of Education (DepEd) to reform its primary education K–10 curricula in 2023 to reduce inefficiencies and improve student performance. The Matatag curriculum focuses on strengthening primary skills in literacy, numeracy, and values education and addresses the inefficiencies in the previous curriculum. This paper explains the reason for the reform and its key features and implications.      The Matatag curriculum involved major structural changes, which aimed to achieve better learning outcomes. According to DepEd, the former curriculum is overburdened, resulting in an insufficient understanding and inferior mastery of competencies (Macasero, 2023). With the Mata...