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MANILA -- More than 24 million Filipinos aged ten to 64 are functionally illiterate, while 5.8 million are basically illiterate, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said during Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate Committee on Basic Education.

Gatchalian, chair of the Committee, presented the findings of his office in light of their discussion on the initial results of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) 2024 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS).

“We have 5.86 million constituents who cannot read, write, and compute. Ito yung tinatawag nating no read no write,” he said. “The more accurate for the 24.8 million is they cannot comprehend. They can read, they can write, they can compute but they cannot comprehend.”

According to PSA, functional literacy is a higher form of literacy and is defined as the ability to read, write, compute and comprehend; meanwhile, 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.”

Functional literacy in 2024 was at 70.8%, which translates to 60,170,000 Filipinos aged 10 to 64, while basic literacy was at 93.1% or 79,135,000 Filipinos from the same age bracket, according to the PSA.

The agency also mentioned an alarming number of senior high school graduates who are not functionally literate.

“Only 79% of senior high school graduates in the K to 12 curriculum are functionally literate,” Adrian Cerezo, PSA Assistant National Statistician, said.

Gatchalian responded: “That’s quite concerning. That means one out of five of our graduates cannot comprehend and understand a simple story.”

“If you look at 2024 figure, there are 18 million students who the PSA detected that are senior high school, that are high school graduates and junior high school graduates, but are not functionally literate. So meaning they graduated from our basic education system but they cannot read, they cannot understand a simple story. That should not happen,” the Senator added.

LOWEST LITERACY RATE
Cerezo said basic literacy rate in 2024 was highest in Central Luzon or Region III at 92.8%, while the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) recorded the lowest with 81%.

The Cordillera Administrative Region had the highest functional literacy rate at 81.2%, while Region IX or the Zamboanga Peninsula had the lowest with 59.3%.

According to Gatchalian, Tawi-Tawi tops all of the places with high functional illiteracy rates.”

“That’s about 218,000 in terms of constituents,” Gatchalian said. “In Tawi-tawi, if you want to bring businesses there, have meaningful livelihood programs, it’s very difficult if people cannot understand and comprehend a simple story.”