Stakeholders Urge Early Childhood Investment Ahead of SONA

Education stakeholders on Monday urged the government to prioritize early childhood investments to help address nationwide learning gaps ahead of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA). “The solution to Philippine education, unfortunately, must begin in early childhood,” PHINMA Education Holdings, Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Chito B. Salazar told reporters in a press briefing. “What I would like the government to do is bite the bullet and say we’re making this decision not for policy reasons but for evidence reasons,” he added. Stunting is among the major public health concerns in early childhood development in the Philippines. Findings from the DOST-Food and Nutrition Research Institute (DOST-FNRI) report showed that the stunting rate among those aged 0 to 59 months in the country reached 25.3% in 2025, up from 23.6% in 2023. The stunting rate is significantly higher in rural areas than in urban areas at 27.8% and 23.2%, respectively. The highest stunting prevalence was recorded in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) at 36.0%, followed by the Zamboanga Peninsula at 34.6%, the Negros Island Region at 30.9%, and MIMAROPA at 30.3%. Beyond its physical health toll among children, malnutrition at a young age is also linked to poor literacy rates, numeracy, and overall learning achievement. According to the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2), stunting severely impairs cognitive development, language acquisition, and readiness to learn. “The investments should focus on fixed assistance in early childhood so that as many of our kids as possible are properly nourished,” Mr. Salazar said. “If they’re properly nourished and they can read at grade one or kinder, a lot of the solutions will have solved themselves already.” Apart from early childhood development, PHINMA Education also urged the government to expand voucher programs in private schools to create better opportunities for underprivileged students. “One idea that we’ve been pushing is the idea of complementarity through the use of more extensive use of vouchers,” PHINMA Education Chairman Ramon R. del Rosario Jr. told reporters in a media briefing. With more extensive voucher use, Mr. Del Rosario said children will be able to enroll in private schools rather than face limited options in government-owned schools. “Recognize the fact that there is good quality schools run by the private sector that are also available in the areas where the kids are, except that the tuition tends to be very high,” he said. “If you combine the idea of vouchers for kids who might opt to go to private schools rather than public schools, I think that will go a long way towards improving the kind of education that people get,” he added. PHINMA Education is the education unit of the Del Rosario-led conglomerate PHINMA Corp. It had 177,851 students in School Year 2025-2026, of whom 174,279 were from the Philippines and 3,572 from Indonesia. — Almira Louise S. Martinez