‘NON-NEGOTIABLE’: 18 million Filipino students cannot read, understand simple story

National

MORE than 18 million Filipino students who graduated from senior and junior high school in 2024 are not functionally literate, a data presented by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

According to the PSA, those who are not functionally literate are persons who cannot read, write, compute, and comprehend.

The PSA presented the data before a Senate committee hearing headed by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian.

“If you look at the 2024 figure, there are 18 million students who the PSA detected that 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,” said Gatchalian in an Inquirer report.

Gatchalian said having students who are not functionally literate should not happen as the basic goal of education is to help learners to be able to read and write.

“That’s non-negotiable that a student who will graduate from our basic education system should be functionally literate — that’s not the case now,” he said.

The data presented also showed that there are about 24.8 million Filipinos who have problems understanding a simple story.

“This is the gravity of our situation right now,” said Gatchalian.

Assistant National Statistician Adrian Cerezo, for his part, disclosed that only 79 percent of senior high school graduates nationwide in 2024 are functionally literate.

“That’s not in your presentation, you have detected that 21 percent of our senior high school graduates are not functionally literate. That’s quite concerning — that means one 1 out of 5 of our graduates cannot comprehend a single story. That’s something that we need to address,” said Gatchalian.

It was also during the hearing that top provinces with the highest number of illiterates were revealed. These provinces include Tawi-Tawi (67 percent), Davao Occidental (53 percent), Zamboanga del Sur (49 percent), Northern Samar (48 percent), Basilan (48 percent), Sarangani (48 percent), Western Samar (46 percent), Agusan del Norte (44 percent), Sultan Kudarat (44 percent), and Lanao del Norte (44 percent).