DAVAO CITY (October 29) — With 255,385 Indigenous Peoples (IP) learners—the largest number nationwide—Davao Region faces a critical education challenge: ensuring that its public schools can keep Indigenous children enrolled and teach them effectively, amid gaps in culturally responsive education and reading proficiency, the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2) reported.
IP learners account for 22 percent of public school enrollment in the region, or more than one in five learners, according to an Edcom 2 media briefer released Oct. 26. Yet only 20.2 percent of public schools in Davao Region implement Indigenous Peoples Education (IPEd), leaving education authorities with the task of ensuring that schools serving Indigenous communities can respond to their cultural and linguistic needs.
The region has 15.6 percent of the country’s IP learners, ahead of the Cordillera Administrative Region, with 230,943, and Region 9, with 180,086. Davao Region has the third-highest proportion of IP learners in public school enrollment among the country’s 18 regions, nearly three times the national rate of 7.4 percent.
The figures put pressure on the Department of Education and local education stakeholders to show whether existing programs are reaching Indigenous children—not only through enrollment, but also through culturally responsive instruction and measurable improvements in learning.
In its Year 3 report, Edcom 2 said regions with large IP learner populations, “particularly Regions 11 and the Cordillera Administrative Region, contend with diverse cultural and linguistic contexts that often remain unsupported by mainstream schooling practices.”
Nationally, only 3,763 of 19,948 schools with IP learners, or 18.9 percent, implemented IPEd, based on 2024 DepEd data cited in Edcom 2’s National Education Plan for 2026 to 2035. The plan also found that only 60.4 percent of school-age IP children were enrolled in 2025.
Reading proficiency is another concern. In school year 2024–2025, only 24.91 percent of learners in IPEd schools reached at least the proficient level in the Early Language, Literacy, and Numeracy Assessment, compared with 30.52 percent nationally.
These are national figures, not Davao-specific reading results. But they raise a pressing local question: whether the region’s large Indigenous learner population is receiving the teaching support, learning materials and culturally appropriate instruction needed to keep children in school and help them learn.
Davao City has 48 IPEd-implementing schools, the most among the region’s 49 local government units, according to the briefer. The document also cites 7,666 learners served by 48 IPEd schools but does not specify the geographic coverage of that figure.
The accountability challenge is therefore not simply to expand the number of IPEd schools. Education authorities also need to establish whether Indigenous learners are enrolling, staying in school and achieving stronger reading and numeracy outcomes—and whether resources are reaching remote communities where access to education is most difficult.
