CRLA results for SY 2025-26 in Region III (Central Luzon) are above the national figures in every grade and language assessed. At the end of the year, 54.7% of the 520,994 Grade 1–3 learners in 3,024 public schools read at grade level, against 47.6% nationally, and 7.9% were struggling readers, against 10.0%, a difference of -2.1 percentage points. By that share the region ranks 5 of 18 regions, counting from the lowest.
The strong average sits beside a city pattern. Every division five or more points from the regional share is a city division: Tarlac City, Olongapo City and Mabalacat City well above it, Baliwag City well below. It is also one of the five regions in DepEd’s selected-school CRLA file, so the same schools can be followed through the year, and its schools are far more likely than most to have a School Principal.
Key findings
- 54.7% of Grade 1–3 learners in Region III read at grade level at the end of SY 2025-26, against 47.6% nationally, and 7.9% (41,175 learners) were struggling readers, against 10.0%.
- Every grade-and-language block is above the national share at grade level, from Grade 3 English (+5.9 points) to Grade 3 Filipino (+9.4 points).
- The divisions five or more percentage points from the regional share are all city divisions: Baliwag City (2.3%); Mabalacat City (13.6%); Olongapo City (13.8%); Tarlac City (16.5%); even Tarlac City stays inside the national funnel’s 95% limits.
- Tarlac province leads the municipal ranking by estimated share (Anao, Tarlac (18.3%); City of Tarlac (Capital), Tarlac (16.5%); San Jose, Tarlac (16.1%); Botolan, Zambales (14.9%); Minalin, Pampanga (14.0%)); only 1 municipality forms a low-low cluster, and 0 form high-high ones.
- In SY 2023-24 the median Region III school had 27.8 learners per teacher against 22.8 nationally, only 2.7% of schools offered multigrade classes against 15.3%, and within divisions 5 inputs have an odds ratio whose 95% interval excludes 1.
- Region III schools are far more often led by a principal: 59.4% report a School Principal position, against 40.7% nationally, and their raw struggling share is 7.4%, against 9.7% in schools without one.
- In the Region III schools also in DepEd’s selected-school file, the share at grade level rose from 18.3% at the start of SY 2025-26 to 52.1% at the end, and the struggling share fell from 38.9% to 8.7%.
CRLA reading levels by grade and language in Region III
The CRLA sorts learners into five levels; struggling readers are at the two lowest, Low Emerging and High Emerging. The table sets each grade-and-language block beside the regional and national totals.
| Grade and language | Learners | Low Emerging | High Emerging | Developing | Transitioning | At Grade Level | Struggling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 1 Mother Tongue | 169,867 | 7.2% | 4.4% | 11.7% | 24.8% | 51.8% | 11.6% |
| Grade 2 Mother Tongue | 170,473 | 3.7% | 2.1% | 8.9% | 29.5% | 55.9% | 5.8% |
| Grade 2 Filipino | 162,124 | 3.7% | 2.1% | 8.8% | 29.2% | 56.2% | 5.8% |
| Grade 3 Filipino | 182,195 | 2.6% | 1.4% | 5.9% | 29.9% | 60.2% | 4.0% |
| Grade 3 English | 189,003 | 3.7% | 2.7% | 8.3% | 29.4% | 56.0% | 6.4% |
| Region III, all learners | 520,994 | 4.8% | 3.1% | 9.6% | 27.8% | 54.7% | 7.9% |
| Philippines, all learners | 5,127,670 | 6.9% | 3.1% | 10.4% | 32.0% | 47.6% | 10.0% |
The share at grade level is ahead of the national figure by +6.4 points in Grade 1 Mother Tongue, +9.2 in Grade 2 Filipino and +9.4 in Grade 3 Filipino. The smallest lead is in Grade 3 English (+5.9 points).
English is the region’s soft spot in Grade 3: 6.4% of learners struggle in English against 4.0% in Filipino. Grade 1 still has the most struggling readers, 11.6%, though that is below the national 14.4%.
Schools divisions in Region III
Region III has 21 schools divisions, many of them city divisions with a few dozen schools each. Their figures are empirical Bayes estimates, which blend each division’s own share with the national rate according to how many learners it assessed. A national funnel plot draws limits around the national rate that narrow as divisions grow; a division outside them differs by more than its size would explain.
The table adds each division’s national rank.
| Division | Schools | Learners | Struggling readers | Share struggling | Estimate (95% interval) | National rank of 232 (95% interval) | National funnel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Angeles City | 42 | 18,749 | 1,467 | 7.8% | 7.8% (7.5%–8.2%) | 89 (80–100) | within limits |
| Aurora | 137 | 12,022 | 806 | 6.7% | 6.7% (6.3%–7.2%) | 67 (57–76) | within limits |
| Balanga City | 18 | 4,426 | 332 | 7.5% | 7.5% (6.7%–8.3%) | 80 (69–103) | within limits |
| Baliwag City | 21 | 6,285 | 145 | 2.3% | 2.3% (2.0%–2.7%) | 7 (6–14) | within limits |
| Bataan | 168 | 30,464 | 1,841 | 6.0% | 6.0% (5.8%–6.3%) | 52 (50–58) | within limits |
| Bulacan | 421 | 105,277 | 6,612 | 6.3% | 6.3% (6.1%–6.4%) | 57 (54–61) | within limits |
| Cabanatuan City | 57 | 13,691 | 1,389 | 10.1% | 10.1% (9.7%–10.6%) | 149 (140–157) | within limits |
| City of San Jose Del Monte | 35 | 28,176 | 2,321 | 8.2% | 8.2% (7.9%–8.6%) | 101 (91–110) | within limits |
| Gapan City | 33 | 6,176 | 302 | 4.9% | 4.9% (4.4%–5.5%) | 44 (36–48) | within limits |
| Mabalacat City | 40 | 12,084 | 1,649 | 13.6% | 13.6% (13.0%–14.2%) | 193 (189–199) | within limits |
| Malolos City | 47 | 9,172 | 352 | 3.8% | 3.9% (3.5%–4.3%) | 26 (21–33) | within limits |
| Meycauayan City | 26 | 9,952 | 845 | 8.5% | 8.5% (8.0%–9.1%) | 107 (92–125) | within limits |
| Nueva Ecija | 628 | 66,417 | 4,319 | 6.5% | 6.5% (6.3%–6.7%) | 61 (57–69) | within limits |
| Olongapo City | 28 | 11,631 | 1,609 | 13.8% | 13.8% (13.2%–14.4%) | 194 (190–201) | within limits |
| Pampanga | 429 | 64,048 | 5,199 | 8.1% | 8.1% (7.9%–8.3%) | 97 (90–104) | within limits |
| San Fernando City | 39 | 14,008 | 1,738 | 12.4% | 12.4% (11.9%–12.9%) | 183 (174–189) | within limits |
| San Jose City | 50 | 7,332 | 498 | 6.8% | 6.8% (6.3%–7.4%) | 70 (57–79) | within limits |
| Science City of Muñoz | 31 | 3,211 | 218 | 6.8% | 6.8% (6.0%–7.7%) | 71 (53–85) | within limits |
| Tarlac | 432 | 49,376 | 4,247 | 8.6% | 8.6% (8.4%–8.8%) | 111 (103–120) | within limits |
| Tarlac City | 87 | 16,043 | 2,648 | 16.5% | 16.5% (15.9%–17.1%) | 212 (212–213) | within limits |
| Zambales | 255 | 32,454 | 2,638 | 8.1% | 8.1% (7.8%–8.4%) | 99 (88–106) | within limits |
Shares run from 2.3% to 16.5%. The top of the range belongs to city divisions, led by Tarlac City (16.5%), with Olongapo City, Mabalacat City and San Fernando City next. Still, the funnel keeps every Region III division inside its 95% limits. At the low end is another city, Baliwag City (2.3%).
The largest count is in Bulacan (6,612 struggling readers), a provincial division whose share is below the region’s.
Languages of instruction
Language of instruction is a school-level label on the dashboard; it does not record what each child speaks at home. Region III has 2 languages declared by at least ten schools, Tagalog (94% of schools) and Kapampangan, compared in the table.
| Language of instruction | Schools | Learners | Share struggling | At Grade Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tagalog | 2,850 | 495,555 | 7.8% | 54.9% |
| Kapampangan | 156 | 23,657 | 8.6% | 51.5% |
Kapampangan-medium schools have a slightly higher struggling share and a lower share at grade level than Tagalog-medium schools, a gap between communities in particular places, not between languages.
Grade 2 learners are assessed in both Filipino and the mother tongue, and the Filipino-minus-Mother-Tongue gap in the share at grade level is +0.0 points here, against -0.8 for the country. With most schools declaring Tagalog, the base of Filipino, near-identical Grade 2 results are expected.
Where struggling readers are concentrated in Region III
Each of Region III’s 130 municipalities and cities is colored by its size-adjusted estimate of the share struggling, in the national map’s classes. The map is about places, not any child.
Tarlac province stands out. The highest estimated shares are in Anao, Tarlac (18.3%); City of Tarlac (Capital), Tarlac (16.5%); San Jose, Tarlac (16.1%); Botolan, Zambales (14.9%); Minalin, Pampanga (14.0%), and City of Tarlac is the only place on both that list and the list of places with the most struggling readers. The table shows that second list, all cities.
| Municipality or city | Province | Struggling readers | Learners | Estimated share struggling | Cluster |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| City of Tarlac (Capital) | Tarlac | 2,648 | 16,043 | 16.5% | No cluster |
| City of San Jose del Monte | Bulacan | 2,321 | 28,176 | 8.2% | No cluster |
| City of San Fernando (Capital) | Pampanga | 1,745 | 14,201 | 12.3% | No cluster |
| Mabalacat City | Pampanga | 1,649 | 12,084 | 13.6% | No cluster |
| Olongapo City | Zambales | 1,609 | 11,631 | 13.8% | No cluster |
A cluster test (local Moran’s I, corrected for many tests at FDR 5%) looks for neighboring places that are all high or all low. It marks 1 municipality as low-low and 0 as high-high, so Tarlac’s high-share places do not form a cluster.
Early childhood: stunting and day care centers
The dashboard also reports stunting among children aged 0–2 in OPT Plus 2025 and child development centers (CDCs), the barangay day care centers. Stunting stands at 4.3% of the 324,929 children measured in Region III, the same as the national 4.3%. Of its 3,105 barangays, 199 (6.4%) have no CDC, against 10.9% nationally. The table compares provinces.
| Province or highly urbanized city | Children 0–2 measured | Stunted | Barangays without a CDC | Learners struggling |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aurora | 7,082 | 5.2% | 4 of 151 | 6.7% |
| Bataan | 25,516 | 2.9% | 28 of 237 | 6.2% |
| Bulacan | 97,918 | 3.3% | 17 of 572 | 6.5% |
| Nueva Ecija | 54,826 | 6.3% | 69 of 849 | 6.9% |
| Pampanga | 73,889 | 5.1% | 37 of 538 | 9.2% |
| Tarlac | 43,166 | 2.6% | 20 of 511 | 10.5% |
| Zambales | 22,532 | 6.4% | 24 of 247 | 9.6% |
Zambales has the highest stunting share, Zambales (6.4%), while Tarlac has the lowest stunting share yet the highest share of struggling readers. Province figures like these compare places, and the children measured at ages 0–2 in 2025 are a younger group than the CRLA learners. The national analysis is in Stunting, Day Care Centers and Early Reading.
School resources
The school data date from SY 2023-24, two school years before these reading results, and come from DepEd’s school files. The table compares Region III’s median school and facility shares with the country’s.
| School input (SY 2023-24) | Region III | Philippines |
|---|---|---|
| Learners per teacher (elementary) | 27.8 | 22.8 |
| Learners per classroom (elementary) | 29.3 | 25.8 |
| Schools with internet | 94.5% | 76.3% |
| Schools with electricity | 98.9% | 97.6% |
| Schools with a water supply | 99.3% | 97.8% |
| Schools with no functional toilet | 0.7% | 2.3% |
| Schools with multigrade classes | 2.7% | 15.3% |
Region III schools are more crowded than the national median: 27.8 learners per teacher against 22.8, and 29.3 per classroom against 25.8. Multigrade classes are rare, and internet is close to universal.
A separate model for Region III compares each school only with others in its own division. An odds ratio of 1 means no difference; higher values go with more struggling readers, lower values with fewer. Its clear results, each with a 95% interval that excludes 1, are learners per teacher: odds ratio 1.17 (1.06–1.29); learners per classroom: odds ratio 1.20 (1.13–1.28); buildings needing major repair: odds ratio 0.92 (0.87–0.96); school size: odds ratio 0.69 (0.64–0.73); internet: odds ratio 0.72 (0.57–0.91). The two learner ratios, school size and building condition are scaled per standard deviation.
More learners per teacher and per classroom go with more struggling readers, and larger schools and schools with internet with fewer, as in the national model. Only the result for buildings needing repair differs from it: nationally its interval includes 1, while in Region III more buildings needing repair go with slightly fewer struggling readers, possibly a matter of how damage is reported. School Resources and CRLA Reading Results fits the same inputs for the whole country.
School heads
Region III stands out for school leadership: 59.4% of its schools reported a School Principal position in DepEd’s SY 2023-24 personnel file, against 40.7% nationally, and only 9.7% had no head position.
Taken at face value, the struggling share is 7.4% in schools with a principal and 9.7% in schools without one. Principals are more often found in larger, urban schools, so the raw gap also reflects size and place. CRLA Results in Schools With and Without a Principal compares similar schools nationally.
Programs recorded in Region III
The dashboard’s program list, reported by NGOs and corporate foundations, records 5 programs in Region III: by category Childcare (3); Literacy (1); Nutrition (1); by type Early Grade Reading Intervention (1); CDC Facility Upgrade (1); Supplementary Feeding (0-2yo) (1); Childcare Center Supplies & Equipment (1); Day Care Worker Training (1). Set against need, the region’s 5.0% of the national program list compares with 8.0% of the country’s struggling readers. Because the list holds only what partners chose to report, it is not a census and says nothing about results; see Literacy and Nutrition Programs Compared With Need.
Start and end of the year
Region III is one of the five regions in DepEd’s selected-school CRLA file. DepEd does not say which round that file covers, but its date and results point to the start of the year. In the Region III schools found in both that file and the dashboard, counting each learner once, the share at grade level rose from 18.3% to 52.1% (+33.9 percentage points), and the struggling share fell from 38.9% to 8.7%.
These matched schools are the part of Region III that DepEd’s file covers, so their end-of-year share differs from the region-wide 54.7%. The comparison cannot separate teaching from a year of children’s growth or from differences in how the two rounds were given. CRLA Start vs End of SY 2025-26 in the Same Schools covers all five regions.
What this means for school heads in Region III
For most Region III schools, the task is less about catching up with the country than about the learners the regional average hides. Heads in the high-share city divisions have a case to raise with their division when support is planned.
Grade 3 English has the smallest lead, so schools may check how learners who read well in Filipino are carried into English. Since more learners per classroom goes with more struggling readers within divisions, crowding is worth tracking alongside reading results.
How these numbers were made
The CRLA figures are end-of-year results for SY 2025-26, as of 10 May 2026, for public schools on the EDCOM II early-childhood dashboard. Struggling readers are those at Low Emerging or High Emerging, and each learner is counted once: Grade 1 in the mother tongue, Grade 2 in Filipino and Grade 3 in English. Regional shares are population values, since the CRLA covers almost every learner. CRLA End-of-Year Results SY 2025-26 sets out the national methods, and How to Read a School’s CRLA Results Fairly explains the estimates.
Limits
Teachers give and record the CRLA, so practice can differ. School inputs predate the reading results by two years, and every model result is an association. The early-childhood figures concern younger children and whole places.
Frequently asked questions
How do CRLA results in Region III compare with the national results?
Region III is ahead in every grade and language. At the end of SY 2025-26, 54.7% of its Grade 1–3 learners read at grade level against 47.6% nationally, and 7.9% were struggling readers against 10.0%.
Do Region III’s city divisions have the highest shares of struggling readers?
Yes, at the top of the range. The highest share is in Tarlac City (16.5%), followed by Olongapo City and Mabalacat City. The most struggling readers by count are in Bulacan (6,612 struggling readers), a much larger division with a lower share.
Did CRLA results in Region III rise during SY 2025-26?
Yes, in the schools that DepEd’s selected-school file covers: the share at grade level rose from 18.3% to 52.1% over the year. DepEd does not say which round that file covers, but its date and results point to the start of the year.
Download the data
The cleaned EDCOM II dashboard data behind this series are free to download for personal study; to reuse them, email support@nash.com.ph for written permission first. How the EDCOM Dashboard Data Was Cleaned explains every table and cleaning rule. The files are at data.nash.com.ph: start with the README, then the school table with CRLA results and school inputs (Parquet), the school estimates (CSV), the division estimates (CSV) and the municipal table (CSV). The DepEd school files used for school inputs are described in Download Cleaned DepEd School Data.
Every file, with its rows, columns and checksum, is listed on the EDCOM II CRLA data page. To cite the data: Llego, M. A. (2026). EDCOM II early-childhood dashboard data, cleaned, version 1. NASH Reviewer. https://nash.com.ph/edcom-data
More in this series
- CRLA End-of-Year Results SY 2025-26: All 18 Regions
- CRLA Start vs End of SY 2025-26 in the Same Schools
- CRLA by Language: Mother Tongue, Filipino and English
- How to Read a School’s CRLA Results Fairly
- CRLA Variation: School, Division or Region?
- Where Struggling Readers Are Concentrated
- School Resources and CRLA Reading Results
- CRLA Results in Schools With and Without a Principal
- Action Research and Thesis Topics on Reading (CRLA)
- CRLA Reading Hotspots: A Map of Struggling Readers
- Stunting, Day Care Centers and Early Reading
- Literacy and Nutrition Programs Compared With Need
- CRLA Schools With No Struggling Readers: A Data Check
- How the EDCOM Dashboard Data Was Cleaned
- Regional reports: NCR, CAR, Region I, Region II, Region III, Region IV-A, MIMAROPA, Region V, Region VI, NIR, Region VII, Region VIII, Region IX, Region X, Region XI, Region XII, Caraga, BARMM
- Earlier reports: CRLA Results SY 2025-2026 (DepEd’s selected-school file), Do the Same DepEd Schools Lag on the ELLNA, NAT and CRLA?, DepEd School Inputs vs Test Results, EDCOM II Final Report: Guide for Aspiring School Heads, DepEd Data for Aspiring School Heads: Where to Start
Analysis and charts by Mark Anthony Llego for NASH Reviewer. Data: EDCOM II early-childhood dashboard and Department of Education public datasets. NASH Reviewer is not affiliated with EDCOM II or DepEd. Charts may be reused only with written permission from support@nash.com.ph.