INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE (IJRISS)
ISSN No. 2454-6186 | DOI: 10.47772/IJRISS | Volume IX Issue XI November 2025
Learning Recovery Through Distributed Leadership: A Review on
the Implementation of Deped’s Aral Program
Hananena B. De Los Santos, MALE; Froremie T. Montecillo, MALE, Gladys S. Escarlos, PhD
Department of Education, Central Mindanao University, Philippines
Received: 17 November 2025; Accepted: 24 November 2025; Published: 29 November 2025
The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions in education, resulting in severe learning losses among
Filipino learners, especially in foundational literacy and numeracy skills. In response, the Department of
Education (DepEd) launched the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program to bridge
learning gaps and accelerate academic recovery nationwide. However, the success of such a large-scale initiative
depends on effective leadership and collaboration at all school levels. This review examines the implementation
of the ARAL Program through the lens of Distributed Leadership Theory, which emphasizes shared
responsibility, collective agency, and contextual adaptability among multiple actors—school heads, teacher-
leaders, tutors, parents, and local government units (LGUs). Drawing on recent literature and policy reports, the
paper argues that distributed leadership fosters stronger ownership, adaptability, and sustainability in learning
recovery efforts. When leadership is shared and collaborative, ARAL becomes not only a remedial intervention
but a community-driven movement that empowers schools to respond effectively to learners’ diverse needs.
Keywords: distributed leadership, ARAL program, learning recovery, educational governance, DepEd
Philippines, collaborative leadership, post-pandemic education
INTRODUCTION
The disruption of face-to-face schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic left deep learning gaps around the
world, particularly in foundational skills in literacy and numeracy (World Bank et al., 2022). In the Philippine
context, the Department of Education’s ARAL Program was established by law under RA 12028, signed in 2024,
to accelerate learning recovery and support learners who were falling behind (Department of Education, 2024).
According to Republic Act No. 12028 (2024), among the ARAL Program’s key goals are strengthening
foundational competencies in reading, mathematics, and science; mobilizing well-chosen and trained tutors; and
engaging communities through campaigns to encourage learners to return to school.
However, implementing large-scale recovery initiatives such as ARAL raises complex governance and
leadership challenges: identifying who leads, how responsibilities are distributed, how stakeholders collaborate,
and how local contexts are engaged (Republic Act No. 12028, 2024). Traditional leadership models often rely
on a single head or centralized hierarchy, but this can limit the school’s ability to respond and adapt. Scholars
have argued that in complex, changing contexts (e.g., during a crisis), distributed leadership enables greater
responsiveness, collective ownership, and adaptive capacity (Cheng, 2024).
In response, this review proposes to examine the implementation of the ARAL Program through the theoretical
lens of Distributed Leadership Theory—namely, how leadership tasks and responsibilities are shared among
multiple actors (school heads, teachers, tutors, communities, parents) to better support learning recovery. By
doing so, we aim to highlight how distributed leadership practices can enhance the ARAL implementation, what
conditions enable it, and what barriers remain.
Conceptual Foundation Of Distributed Leadership
Distributed Leadership Theory stems from the idea that leadership in schools is not solely centered on one
individual but is best conceptualized as “a series of practices carried out by multiple actors” in dynamic
interaction with context (Gómez-Hurtado et al., 2020). For example, in the middle‐school classroom context,
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