IT IS LAMENTABLE, to say the least, that 19 million Filipino students– not just high school graduates in public schools– are functionally illiterate as this spells doom for our country’s future generations.
And for the Department of Education to declare that this huge number of practical robots– those who barely understand what they read and memorized in school spreads across all lower grade-separated and heaven forbid, undergraduate levels – can’t mentally function on their own.
GMA Integrated News quoted DepEd saying that based on the 2024 survey the 19 million Filipinos considered “functionally illiterate” came from a much broader age group, not just high school.
‘[L]iteracy must be at the heart of our education reforms … Ensuring that every Filipino learner is functionally literate is a commitment we owe to our constituents.’
STRUGGLING
DepEd Undersecretary for Strategic Management Ronald Mendoza said the 2024 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) data, presented last week by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in a Senate basic education committee hearing, actually indicated that 18.9 million Filipinos aged 10 to 64 were classified as functionally illiterate.
This means that these people can read, write, and compute but struggle with comprehension, regardless of their educational attainment.
Mendoza said only about 11.6 million were Junior High School and Senior High School learners for School Year 2024-2025, “making it incorrect to attribute the full 18.9 million figure solely to high school graduates.”
He said the PSA recently revised the definitions of “basic and functional literacy” which also raised the standard on literacy to include high level comprehension skills.
“Previously, individuals aged 5 years old and above were classified as basic literate if they could read and write; and individuals aged 10 to 64 years old as functionally literate if (1) they could read, write, and compute, (2) could read, write, compute and comprehend, or (3) at least high school graduate in the old basic education curriculum or at least junior high school completer in the K to 12 curriculum,” the DepEd official explained.
“The 2024 revision involves more stringent criteria. Basic literates now should be able to read, write with understanding, and compute whereas functional literates should be able to read, write, compute AND comprehend,” he added.
COMPREHENSION LEVEL
Because of this, Mendoza said the overall literacy rates in the country have decreased.
He said that before the definitional changes the basic and functional literacy rates would have been 95.1 percent and 93.1 percent, respectively.
But under the revised criteria, these figures have dropped to 90.0 percent and 70.8 percent, respectively.
“Using this revised measure, the functional literacy rate is about 70.8 percent. Simply put, around seven out of ten Filipinos possess high-level comprehension skills to process and apply information effectively in daily life,” Mendoza said.
Following the release of the 2024 FLEMMS, Education Secretary Sonny Angara reaffirmed the DepEd’s commitment to ensuring that every learner in the country is functionally literate.
“We will not let any learner fall behind in reading and comprehension, Angara stressed.
WE FAILED YOUTH
The recent FLEMMS results on functional literacy highlight what we have long recognized—literacy must be at the heart of our education reforms,” said Angara’s statement.
“Ensuring that every Filipino learner is functionally literate is a commitment we owe to our constituents,” he added.
DepEd Assistant Secretary for Curriculum and Teaching Jerome Buenviaje cited the need to develop learners’ literacy skills as early as kindergarten to address the alarming state of functional illiteracy among Filipinos.
Despite DepEd’s efforts, Buenviaje stressed that addressing functional illiteracy could not be done by DepEd alone, as this problem was also caused by other factors such as poor nutrition.
In short the government has been failing its youth in most, if not all, aspects of their growth and education.