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Neil Jayson Servallos - The Philippine Star
May 6, 2025 | 12:00am
This file photo shows the Department of Education.
STAR / File
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education (DepEd) clarified yesterday that the 18.9 million Filipinos identified in the 2024 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) as functionally illiterate do not refer specifically to high school graduates, but to Filipinos aged 10 to 64, regardless of educational attainment.
In a position paper sent to reporters, DepEd Undersecretary Ronald Mendoza explained that the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)’s survey covers a broad segment of the population and is not limited to those who finished high school.
He pointed out that there were 11.6 million junior and senior high school learners enrolled in school year 2024-2025, “making it incorrect to attribute the full 18.9 million figure solely to high school graduates.”
Mendoza also noted that the PSA recently revised its definitions of “basic” and “functional” literacy.
Under the new criteria, basic literacy includes the ability to read, write with understanding and compute, while functional literacy adds comprehension to those skills.
“As a result of these definitional changes, overall literacy rates have decreased,” he said.
Had the PSA used its previous definitions, the DepEd official said basic and functional literacy rates would have been higher.
“Using the previous definitions, the basic and functional literacy rates would have been 95.1 percent and 93.1 percent, respectively. However, under the revised criteria, these figures have dropped to 90.0 percent and 70.8 percent, respectively,” Mendoza said.
The PSA has not yet responded to DepEd’s position paper.
Mendoza reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to addressing literacy challenges but emphasized the complexity of the issue.
“There are no easy fixes, and we need to continue to raise awareness on the need to dramatically boost investments to move the needle on functional literacy among Filipinos. It helps to get our facts straight, so we know we’re on the right path,” he said.
