The Literacy Catch-Up: Synthesizing Reading Remediation Strategies for Senior High School Learners in the Philippines

Background: The Philippines faces a persistent literacy crisis that extends beyond the primary grades. National and international indicators show that many learners enter secondary education without secure reading foundations, while senior high school courses demand increasingly complex disciplinary reading and writing. Objective: This narrative review synthesized contemporary evidence on reading remediation for adolescents and translated that evidence into a context-responsive framework for Grades 11 and 12 in the Philippines. Methods: A structured narrative review prioritized peer-reviewed meta-analyses, systematic reviews, randomized and quasi-experimental studies, evidence-based practice guidance, and Philippine policy and curriculum documents. Literature published mainly from 2019 to 2025 was examined across decoding and morphology, fluency, vocabulary and background knowledge, comprehension, motivation, intervention intensity, and disciplinary literacy. Results: Meta-analytic evidence showed positive effects for adolescent reading comprehension interventions (g = 0.63), broader comprehension interventions for struggling readers (g = 0.59), and targeted fluency intervention (effect size = 0.46). Motivation-focused interventions also produced gains in reading comprehension (d = 0.27). Across sources, effective remediation was explicit, diagnostically matched, multicomponent, sufficiently intensive, progress-monitored, and connected to meaningful text. Evidence also showed that gains can diminish after intervention and that fluency practice alone rarely transfers reliably to comprehension. Conclusion: Senior high school literacy recovery should combine protected foundational remediation for learners with persistent word-level or fluency deficits with subject-embedded instruction in vocabulary, comprehension, and disciplinary reading. This two-layer model preserves curricular rigor while addressing unfinished foundational learning.