The head of the Department of Education has this to say about functional illiteracy.
Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Sonny Angara to implement stronger interventions to remedy functional illiteracy among graduates.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian shared during the hearing of the Senate Committee on Basic Education that over 24 million Filipinos, from age ten to 64, are functionally illiterate, and 5.8 million are basically illiterate.
Gatchalian is the chair of the committee, and he presented the data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) 2024 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS). Based on the figures, 5.86 million cannot read, write, and compute, while 24.8 million can read and write but cannot comprehend.
Functional literacy is a higher form of literacy where one can read, write, compute, and comprehend, while basic literacy is the ability “to read and write a simple message in any language or dialect with understanding and to compute or perform basic mathematical operations,” as per PSA.
The agency raised concerns over the alarming number of senior high school graduates who are not functionally literate. Moreover, 18.96 million senior and junior high school graduates in 2024 cannot read and understand a simple story.
Recently, Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Sonny Angara spoke about this and promised to address the problem in order to stop the decline in terms of functional literacy among Filipino graduates.
According to him, the results from FLEMMS were something they had already recognized: “Literacy must be at the heart of our education reforms.”
The DepEd head assured that they are doing their best to address the situation and remedy the decline. Angara said, “Kaya’t lalo naming pinatindi ang mga intervention—mula sa remedial at literacy programs, hanggang sa mas epektibong paggamit ng datos sa bawat paaralan.”
They are doing their best to shape students to be critical thinkers and develop their 21st century skills.
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