# Literacy and Nutrition Programs Compared With Need The three regions with the most struggling readers hold 27.2% of them and 5.0% of the 100 literacy, nutrition and childcare programs on the EDCOM II list. This is the Markdown copy of [Literacy and Nutrition Programs Compared With Need](https://nash.com.ph/blog/literacy-nutrition-programs-coverage), an article on the NASH Reviewer Blog by Mark Anthony Llego, published Oct 27, 2026, updated Nov 4, 2026. Topics: DepEd data. NASH Reviewer is an independent practice platform not affiliated with DepEd, BHROD, or NEAP. The EDCOM II early-childhood dashboard keeps a list of 100 literacy, nutrition and childcare programs run by 24 NGOs and corporate foundations. Set beside CRLA results, the literacy and nutrition programs on that list are few where struggling readers are most numerous. The three regions with the most struggling readers (Region IV-A, BARMM, Region XII) hold 27.2% of them and 5.0% of the recorded programs. Of the 176 municipalities marked here as high need, 10 have a recorded program. Need here means struggling readers in the Comprehensive Rapid Literacy Assessment (CRLA), DepEd's early-grade reading screen, at the end of SY 2025-26 as of 10 May 2026, as published on the [EDCOM II dashboard](https://edcom2.gov.ph/eccddashboard/). A struggling reader is a public school learner at the Low Emerging or High Emerging level, with each learner counted once (Grade 1 Mother Tongue, Grade 2 Filipino and Grade 3 English). The comparison is descriptive only. A list of 100 records is what the dashboard holds, not a census of partner programs, and it cannot show whether any program works. ## Key findings - The EDCOM II programs list holds 100 records from 24 organizations: 39 literacy, 39 nutrition and 22 childcare programs. - 35 records are completed, 30 are active and 35 are planned; together they report 12,210 learners or children served, including the planned programs' intended reach, with a median of 110 per record. - The three regions with the most struggling readers (Region IV-A, BARMM, Region XII) hold 27.2% of the country's struggling readers and 5.0% of the recorded programs. - The regions with no recorded program (NIR, Region XII) together hold 13.4% of struggling readers. - Some regions with fewer struggling readers hold more of the list: Region I has 14.0% of the programs and 4.0% of struggling readers, and Region VIII has 13.0% and 3.5%. - The 176 high-need municipalities hold 26.8% of struggling readers, and 10 of them have a recorded program. ## What the EDCOM II programs list holds The [EDCOM II dashboard](https://edcom2.gov.ph/eccddashboard/) includes a list of programs that NGOs and corporate foundations run in schools and barangays. The cleaned list has 100 records from 24 organizations. 52 records come from NGOs and 48 from corporate social responsibility (CSR) foundations. Each record gives the organization, the program type, the barangay and municipality, a counterpart office, start and end months, a status and the number of learners or children served. The records fall into three categories. 39 are literacy programs, such as book donations, reading remediation and tutoring. 39 are nutrition programs, such as supplementary feeding and growth monitoring. The other 22 are childcare programs, such as building or upgrading Child Development Centers (CDCs) and training day care workers. 35 records are marked completed, 30 active and 35 planned. Start and end dates, given as year and month, run from 2025-01 to 2028-01. The list therefore mixes programs that have already ended with programs planned well past the end of SY 2025-26. A planned record states an intention, and some planned programs may change or not take place. 55 records are tied to a school and 45 to a barangay or local government unit (LGU). Each record names one counterpart: [DepEd](https://www.deped.gov.ph/) for 23 records, the school itself for 22, the LGU for 20, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for 13, the Department of Health (DOH) for 12 and the barangay council for 10. The counterpart is the office the partner works with, which matters for a school head who wants to know whom to ask about a program. Together the records report 12,210 learners or children served. The median record serves 110, so the typical entry is a small program in one school or one barangay. The total includes the counts recorded for planned programs, so it mixes children already reached with children a program plans to reach. The counts are as recorded on the dashboard, with no check against enrollment or attendance. The table below counts the records in each category by status and adds up the learners or children that each category reports serving. | Category | Completed | Active | Planned | Total | Learners or children served | |:-----------|------------:|---------:|----------:|--------:|------------------------------:| | Childcare | 10 | 3 | 9 | 22 | 1527 | | Literacy | 8 | 16 | 15 | 39 | 6307 | | Nutrition | 17 | 11 | 11 | 39 | 4376 | ### Types of literacy, nutrition and childcare programs Within each category the list uses a small set of program types. The table below gives the number of records and the number served for each type, so a school head can see what kind of help the partners on the list offer. | Category | Program type | Records | Served | |:-----------|:---------------------------------------------|----------:|---------:| | Childcare | Child Development Center (CDC) Establishment | 7 | 398 | | Childcare | CDC Facility Upgrade | 6 | 373 | | Childcare | Childcare Center Supplies & Equipment | 5 | 471 | | Childcare | Day Care Worker Training | 4 | 285 | | Literacy | Book/Reading Material Donation | 12 | 2,102 | | Literacy | Reading Remediation (Grades 1-3) | 11 | 1,818 | | Literacy | Literacy Tutoring Program | 9 | 1,466 | | Literacy | Early Grade Reading Intervention | 7 | 921 | | Nutrition | Supplementary Feeding (0-2yo) | 13 | 1,612 | | Nutrition | Growth Monitoring & Weighing | 10 | 928 | | Nutrition | Nutrition Counseling for Mothers | 9 | 1,021 | | Nutrition | Stunting Prevention Program | 7 | 815 | Literacy records are book and reading material donations, reading remediation for Grades 1–3, tutoring programs and early grade reading interventions. Nutrition records cover supplementary feeding for children aged 0–2, growth monitoring and weighing, nutrition counseling for mothers and stunting prevention. The nutrition and childcare types mostly serve young children and their families before Grade 1. That is why they belong in a discussion of early reading: [Stunting, Day Care Centers and Early Reading](https://nash.com.ph/blog/stunting-day-care-and-reading) looks at how those early conditions line up with CRLA results by municipality. ## Literacy and nutrition programs compared with need, by region To compare the list with need, each region gets two shares. The first is its share of the 100 recorded programs. The second is its share of the country's 511,753 struggling readers. When the two shares are close, a region holds about as much of the list as it holds of the need. The difference is plain at the top. Together, the three regions with the most struggling readers (Region IV-A, BARMM, Region XII) hold 27.2% of struggling readers and 5.0% of the programs. Region IV-A holds 9.5% of struggling readers and 2.0% of the programs. BARMM holds 9.5% of struggling readers and 3.0% of the programs, and Region XII holds 8.2% and has no recorded program. Region V holds almost the same share of struggling readers as Region XII (8.2%) but 10.0% of the programs, so the three-region figure depends on where the line is drawn. A region's share of struggling readers reflects both how many learners it has and how many of them struggle. In Region IV-A, a large region, 6.7% of learners are struggling readers, against 10.0% nationally. In BARMM the share is 23.4% and in Region XII 17.7%. Both kinds of need, many learners and high shares, sit on the thin side of the list. The regions with no recorded program at all (NIR, Region XII) together hold 13.4% of struggling readers. NIR holds 5.2% of them and Region XII 8.2%. Region IX and Region X also hold more of the need than of the list: Region IX has 7.2% of struggling readers and 3.0% of the programs, and Region X has 5.0% and 1.0%. Other regions hold more of the list than of the need. Region I has 14.0% of the programs and 4.0% of struggling readers. Region VIII has 13.0% and 3.5%, and CAR has 5.0% and 0.8%. Region II (8.0% of programs, 2.8% of need) and MIMAROPA (8.0% and 4.1%) follow the same pattern. ![Paired bars for 18 regions comparing each region's share of the 100 programs recorded on the EDCOM dashboard with its share of the country's struggling readers. The three regions with the most struggling readers (Region IV-A, BARMM, Region XII) hold 27% of them and 5% of the recorded programs; 2 regions have no recorded program.](https://nash.com.ph/blog/_astro/edcom-programs-vs-need-by-region.BKwEjWso_Z256Ndf.webp) *Figure 1. Each region's share of the programs recorded on the EDCOM II dashboard beside its share of the country's struggling readers, with the regions that hold the most struggling readers at the top. Chart: © 2026 Mark Anthony Llego, NASH Reviewer. [Download the full-resolution chart (PNG)](https://nash.com.ph/blog/charts/deped-data/edcom-programs-vs-need-by-region.png).* The table gives the same figures for all 18 regions. | Region | Programs recorded | Share of programs | Share of struggling readers | |:------------|--------------------:|:--------------------|:------------------------------| | NCR | 4 | 4.0% | 4.9% | | CAR | 5 | 5.0% | 0.8% | | Region I | 14 | 14.0% | 4.0% | | Region II | 8 | 8.0% | 2.8% | | Region III | 5 | 5.0% | 8.0% | | Region IV-A | 2 | 2.0% | 9.5% | | MIMAROPA | 8 | 8.0% | 4.1% | | Region V | 10 | 10.0% | 8.2% | | Region VI | 4 | 4.0% | 3.2% | | NIR | 0 | 0.0% | 5.2% | | Region VII | 9 | 9.0% | 6.5% | | Region VIII | 13 | 13.0% | 3.5% | | Region IX | 3 | 3.0% | 7.2% | | Region X | 1 | 1.0% | 5.0% | | Region XI | 5 | 5.0% | 6.3% | | Region XII | 0 | 0.0% | 8.2% | | Caraga | 6 | 6.0% | 3.1% | | BARMM | 3 | 3.0% | 9.5% | These shares count records, not money, staff time or children reached. A large feeding program and a single book donation each count once. The comparison says where the list's records are, which is not the same as where partner support as a whole goes. ## High-need municipalities with and without a recorded program Regions are large, so the comparison also covers municipalities and cities. A municipality is marked high need if it meets either of two conditions from [CRLA Reading Hotspots: A Map of Struggling Readers](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-reading-hotspots-map). It sits in a high-high cluster, meaning its estimated share of struggling readers is high and so are its neighbors' shares. Or it is in the top tenth of the country's 1,639 municipalities and cities by estimated share struggling. High-high clusters cover 64 municipalities. By region, with the number of municipalities in parentheses, these clusters are in BARMM (38), Region XII (15), Region IX (10), Region XI (1). The two conditions together mark 176 municipalities, which hold 137,254 struggling readers, or 26.8% of the national total. The program records were placed in municipalities through their barangay codes. All 100 records were placed, and they fall in 77 municipalities. Of those, 10 are high-need municipalities, so 10 of the 176 high-need municipalities have at least one recorded program. ![Map of the Philippines with 176 high-need municipalities shaded (high-high reading clusters or the top tenth by estimated share of struggling readers) and 100 recorded program sites marked by category: literacy, nutrition and childcare. 10 of the high-need municipalities have a recorded program.](https://nash.com.ph/blog/_astro/edcom-programs-map.DcCppB0x_2s6pnR.webp) *Figure 2. High-need municipalities shaded on a map of the Philippines, with each recorded program site marked by category: literacy, nutrition or childcare. Chart: © 2026 Mark Anthony Llego, NASH Reviewer. [Download the full-resolution chart (PNG)](https://nash.com.ph/blog/charts/deped-data/edcom-programs-map.png).* On the map, most shaded municipalities are in Mindanao, especially central and southwestern Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, with smaller groups in southern Palawan, Mindoro, the Bicol peninsula, Northern Samar and a few large municipalities on the east coast of Luzon. Most program dots sit outside the shaded areas, clustered in northern and central Luzon, Mindoro, Bicol, Eastern Visayas and Central Visayas. In the shaded part of Mindanao, the dots are few and far apart. These results are about places, not individual children. A high-need municipality without a recorded program may still have partner programs that are not on the list, as well as the regular services of DepEd, the LGU and national agencies. A program in a lower-need municipality may also serve a school whose own learners struggle. [Where Struggling Readers Are Concentrated](https://nash.com.ph/blog/where-struggling-readers-are-concentrated) shows how struggling readers gather in a small share of schools and divisions, the finer level at which a partner can choose sites. ## What this means for school heads and partners For partners planning new work, the list points to gaps. The three regions with the most struggling readers (Region IV-A, BARMM, Region XII) have few records, and the regions with none (NIR, Region XII) have no records at all. These are where a new literacy or nutrition partnership would add most to a thin list. Within a region, the high-need municipalities on the map are a better guide than the regional total, and a school's own CRLA results are a better guide still. For school heads, a practical first step is to make existing partnerships visible. If your school or barangay hosts a feeding, reading or childcare program, ask the partner or your division office whether it is reported to the dashboard, with its status, dates and number served. A list is only as complete as what is reported to it. A program that is not recorded cannot be counted when others look for gaps, and the place may look as if it has no partner support. When a partner offers help, bring the need data to the conversation. The school's CRLA results show which grade and language have the most learners at Low or High Emerging, and the hotspots map shows whether the school sits in a high-need area. A reading program fits a school where many learners are still at the emerging levels. A feeding or stunting program fits a barangay where young children's nutrition is the concern, which the [stunting and day care post](https://nash.com.ph/blog/stunting-day-care-and-reading) examines by place. Ask partners, too, to plan from the start how the program will be followed up, for example by keeping a record of which classes or barangays took part. The dashboard list holds no outcomes, so any later reading of results will depend on records the school and the partner keep. Managing these relationships is part of the community engagement work that the Philippine Professional Standards for School Heads (PPSSH) describe under building connections. ## How these numbers were made The program records come from the programs list on the EDCOM II ECCD dashboard, cleaned by NASH Reviewer as described in [How the EDCOM Dashboard Data Was Cleaned](https://nash.com.ph/blog/edcom-eccd-dashboard-data-cleaned). Counts by category, organization type, status, level and counterpart are simple tallies of the records. The number served is the sum and the median of the figures recorded for each entry. Each record's region was matched to the 18 regions of the PSGC, with Sulu in Region IX and the Negros Island Region (NIR) as its own region. A region's share of struggling readers is its number of CRLA struggling readers divided by the national total, counting each learner once. Because the CRLA covers almost every public school learner in Grades 1–3, these are population figures and carry no sampling interval. Each record carries the PSGC code of its barangay. The municipality part of that code was matched to the municipal boundaries (PSA and NAMRIA) used in the hotspots map. On the map, school-level records are drawn at the school's recorded coordinates. Barangay and LGU records have no coordinates, so they are drawn at the center of their municipality: the dot shows the municipality reliably but not the exact site. High need combines two results from the hotspots analysis. The estimated share struggling is an empirical Bayes estimate, which pulls the raw share of a municipality with few learners toward the national share so that a handful of learners cannot put a small town at the top of the list. High-high clusters come from local Moran's I, which asks whether a municipality and its neighbors all have high shares. Each municipality's test used 9,999 permutations, and the clusters kept are those that pass a 5% false discovery rate (q = 0.05) across all municipalities, which limits the number of clusters found by chance. ## Limits The list's coverage is unknown. The dashboard holds 100 records, and nothing in the list says how many partner programs operate in the country, how records are gathered or whether some regions report more fully than others. The regional differences may reflect reporting as much as where programs actually are. The list records activity, not results. It has no reading or nutrition outcomes, so it cannot show whether any program raised reading levels or reduced stunting. Comparing places with and without programs would not answer that either, because partners choose sites for many reasons, and those reasons may themselves go with reading results. Timing is mixed. Planned programs may not happen, and dates run to 2028-01, well after the CRLA was given. A record does not mean that a program was running when the learners in the CRLA results were assessed. The served counts are as recorded and were not checked, and every record counts once regardless of size. All comparisons here are about places. A region's or municipality's share of struggling readers says nothing about whether the particular children a program serves are struggling readers. ## Frequently asked questions ### Where do the literacy and nutrition programs on the EDCOM II dashboard operate? The 100 records are spread across most regions, with larger shares in Region I (14.0%) and Region VIII (13.0%). The three regions with the most struggling readers (Region IV-A, BARMM, Region XII) hold 27.2% of them and 5.0% of the records. The list is a record of reported programs, not a census. ### Which regions have no recorded literacy or nutrition programs? The EDCOM II list has no program in these regions: NIR, Region XII. Together they hold 13.4% of the country's struggling readers. This means no partner program is recorded there, not that none exists. ### How many high-need municipalities have a program on the EDCOM II list? 10 of the 176 high-need municipalities have at least one recorded program. A municipality counts as high need if it is in a high-high reading cluster or in the top tenth by estimated share of struggling readers. Together these municipalities hold 26.8% of struggling readers. ### Does the EDCOM II programs list show whether the programs work? No. The list gives the organization, program type, place, status, dates and number served, but no reading or nutrition outcomes. It shows where recorded programs are, not what they achieved. ### What kinds of programs are on the EDCOM II list? There are 39 literacy, 39 nutrition and 22 childcare records. Literacy programs include book donations, reading remediation, tutoring and early grade reading interventions. Nutrition and childcare programs include supplementary feeding, growth monitoring, stunting prevention and Child Development Center support. ## 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](mailto:support@nash.com.ph) for written permission first. [How the EDCOM Dashboard Data Was Cleaned](https://nash.com.ph/blog/edcom-eccd-dashboard-data-cleaned) explains every table and cleaning rule. The files are at data.nash.com.ph: start with the [README](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-data/v1/README.md), then the [school table with CRLA results and school inputs](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-data/v1/edcom_crla_2026.parquet) (Parquet), the [school estimates](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-data/v1/school_estimates.csv.gz) (CSV), the [division estimates](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-data/v1/division_estimates.csv) (CSV) and the [municipal table](https://data.nash.com.ph/edcom-data/v1/municipalities.csv) (CSV). The DepEd school files used for school inputs are described in [Download Cleaned DepEd School Data](https://nash.com.ph/blog/download-cleaned-deped-school-data). Every file, with its rows, columns and checksum, is listed on the [EDCOM II CRLA data page](https://nash.com.ph/edcom-data). 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](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-end-of-year-results-sy-2025-2026) - [CRLA Start vs End of SY 2025-26 in the Same Schools](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-start-vs-end-of-year-sy-2025-2026) - [CRLA by Language: Mother Tongue, Filipino and English](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-mother-tongue-filipino-english) - [How to Read a School's CRLA Results Fairly](https://nash.com.ph/blog/how-to-read-school-crla-results) - [CRLA Variation: School, Division or Region?](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-school-division-region-variation) - [Where Struggling Readers Are Concentrated](https://nash.com.ph/blog/where-struggling-readers-are-concentrated) - [School Resources and CRLA Reading Results](https://nash.com.ph/blog/school-resources-and-crla-reading) - [CRLA Results in Schools With and Without a Principal](https://nash.com.ph/blog/schools-with-and-without-principal-crla) - [Action Research and Thesis Topics on Reading (CRLA)](https://nash.com.ph/blog/action-research-topics-reading-crla) - [CRLA Reading Hotspots: A Map of Struggling Readers](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-reading-hotspots-map) - [Stunting, Day Care Centers and Early Reading](https://nash.com.ph/blog/stunting-day-care-and-reading) - [Literacy and Nutrition Programs Compared With Need](https://nash.com.ph/blog/literacy-nutrition-programs-coverage) - [CRLA Schools With No Struggling Readers: A Data Check](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-schools-with-no-struggling-readers) - [How the EDCOM Dashboard Data Was Cleaned](https://nash.com.ph/blog/edcom-eccd-dashboard-data-cleaned) - Regional reports: [NCR](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-ncr), [CAR](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-car), [Region I](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-1-ilocos), [Region II](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-2-cagayan-valley), [Region III](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-3-central-luzon), [Region IV-A](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-4a-calabarzon), [MIMAROPA](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-mimaropa), [Region V](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-5-bicol), [Region VI](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-6-western-visayas), [NIR](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-negros-island-region), [Region VII](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-7-central-visayas), [Region VIII](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-8-eastern-visayas), [Region IX](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-9-zamboanga-peninsula), [Region X](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-10-northern-mindanao), [Region XI](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-11-davao), [Region XII](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-12-soccsksargen), [Caraga](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-region-13-caraga), [BARMM](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026-barmm) - Earlier reports: [CRLA Results SY 2025-2026 (DepEd's selected-school file)](https://nash.com.ph/blog/crla-results-sy-2025-2026), [Do the Same DepEd Schools Lag on the ELLNA, NAT and CRLA?](https://nash.com.ph/blog/deped-schools-lag-ellna-nat-crla), [DepEd School Inputs vs Test Results](https://nash.com.ph/blog/deped-school-inputs-vs-test-results), [EDCOM II Final Report: Guide for Aspiring School Heads](https://nash.com.ph/blog/edcom-ii-final-report), [DepEd Data for Aspiring School Heads: Where to Start](https://nash.com.ph/blog/deped-data-aspiring-school-heads) *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.* --- © 2026 Mark Anthony Llego, NASH Reviewer. All rights reserved. You may quote up to 100 words from this article with the author's name, its title and a link. In research, cite it as: Llego, M. A. (2026, October 27). *Literacy and Nutrition Programs Compared With Need*. NASH Reviewer. https://nash.com.ph/blog/literacy-nutrition-programs-coverage. Any other reuse of the article, its charts or its data needs written permission: email support@nash.com.ph. Terms of Service: https://nash.com.ph/terms#website-content-and-data