Phinma Education Holdings Inc., a unit of listed Phinma Corp., said its first-time board examinees in the country posted a 92-percent passing rate.
The company said it achieved the high passing rate despite 65 percent of its incoming freshmen with reading and mathematics competencies equivalent to the Grade 5 level or below, based on the school’s internal assessments.
The school network, whose students mostly come from low-income families, attributed its success to the academic interventions it undertook during the student’s learning years in the school to address significant learning gaps among freshmen.
The company said its internal assessment found varying levels of academic readiness among incoming college students, with 99 percent assessed as not yet college-ready upon enrollment. The company noted the importance of targeted academic support to help students make a successful transition into higher education.
To combat this, Phinma said it has discarded traditional academic models in favor of a system that prioritized essential skills and remediation, according to Chito Salazar, Phinma Education president and CEO.
‘Our goal is to get as many of them as possible to graduate. The way we deal with it is we’ve adjusted our learning systems, because when you’re teaching students from low-income families, you need to change the system.’
This approach includes focusing the curriculum on job-ready skills and utilizing science-based instruction that treats the brain like a muscle that can be strengthened regardless of a student’s starting point.
It translated into strong performance in professional licensure examinations over the past year, producing 43 board topnotchers and earning recognition for 12 academic programs as among the country’s best-performing.
About eight of its programs-nursing, teacher-elementary and secondary, optometry, criminology, dentistry, medical technology and pharmacy-performed higher than the national board passing average rate in 2025-2026.
To expand its impact, the company is fostering partnerships with government and the private sector to help address college access and completion challenges and boost employability.
Among these is the Napolcom-Phinma Education Kaagapay Partnership, which provides educational opportunities for eligible dependents of National Police Commission and Philippine National Police employees who are senior high school graduates and incoming college students.
Under the partnership, scholarships will be reserved across 12 Phinma Education schools in the Philippines.
The school also collaborated with global information and analytics company Reed Elsevier Philippines, which began in 2021.
Since then, Phinma said 154 students have completed internships with the company, with 62 eventually hired as full-time employees. In 2025 alone, 25 of 35 interns were absorbed into the workforce.