SEN. Sherwin Gatchalian yesterday called on concerned government agencies to implement necessary intervention programs to address the high “basic and functional illiteracy rate” in the country.
Gatchalian made the appeal after the Philippine Statistics Authority, in its 2024 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS), showed that around 5.8 million Filipinos cannot read, write, or compute, while some 28.4 million have problems understanding and comprehending.
The PSA earlier defined “basic literates” as persons who can read and write but amended the definition to include someone who can read and write with understanding and compute after it conducted the FLEMMS in 2024.
Functional literates, on the other hand, are defined by the PSA prior to the 2024 FLEMSS as someone who can read, write, compute or at least a high school graduate in the old school curriculum, but it now defines it as an individual who can read, write, compute, and comprehend.
“In the old definition, there were about 79.135 million constituents considered functional literate but in the new definition, the number of functional literates went down to 60.17 million constituents. In other words, there were high school graduates and junior high school graduates who graduated from our system but are not functionally literate,” Gatchalian said during the Committee on Basic Education hearing on the results of the 2024 FLEMMS.
“That is the problem of basic education. No one should graduate from our basic education system who should not be functionally literate (or those who cannot compute and comprehend). We need to address this,” he added.
Looking at the PSA data, Gatchalian said that Tawi-tawi has the highest basic illiteracy rate at 36 percent or at least 117,000 of its people “cannot read, write, and compute.”
It was followed by Basilan with 23 percent or around 71,000 of its population, Davao Occidental also with 23 percent or 55,000 individuals, Northern Samar with 20 percent or some 98,000 people, and Saranggani province at 18 percent or 77,000 people.
Gatchalian said it is imperative to address illiteracy in the country so that people can “understand and comprehend (even) a simple story.”
“That’s why in launching an intervention program, we have to target all of these provinces and make sure that these provinces get the necessary funding and attention to address basic illiteracy in their locality,” Gatchalian said.
