20 hours Ago By Bonz Magsambol
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rapplerAds.displayAd( "mobile-middle-1" );MANILA, Philippines – Senator Sherwin Gatchalian on Wednesday, April 30, expressed alarm over a report by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) revealing that 18 million Filipino junior and senior high school graduates from 2019 to 2024 are considered “functionally illiterate.”Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate basic education committee, led a hearing on the initial results of the PSA’s 2024 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS).
“If you look at the 2024 figure, there are 18 million students who the PSA detected are senior high school graduates and junior high school graduates, but are not functionally literate. Meaning they graduated from our basic education system, but they cannot read, they cannot understand, and comprehend a simple story,” Gatchalian said.FLEMMS is a national survey conducted by the PSA to gather data on basic and functional literacy rates, as well as the educational skills of the population.
For the 2024 cycle, the PSA updated its definition of functional literacy to go beyond basic reading, writing, and numeracy, incorporating higher-level comprehension skills.“There are high school and junior high school graduates who did not pass the new definition of functional literacy,” Gatchalian noted.“This is the gravity of our situation right now, and I support the new definition [of literacy] because now we have a good picture of where we are,” the senator added.
Citing the data presented to the Senate committee, Gatchalian urged the Department of Education to take a “proactive” approach in ensuring that no student graduates without being functionally literate.“The very basic goal of basic education is that students become functionally literate. That’s not the case now.
In our EDCOM (Second Congressional Commission on Education) rounds, we have detected kids as old as 15 years old who cannot read a simple story. We have seen that on the ground. And I’m sure most of you teachers, principals, have also seen this on the ground,” he said.
The initial FLEMMS results mirror the EDCOM 2 findings that the Philippines is suffering from a severe learning crisis.Play Video– Rappler.com.
