EDITORIAL - Functional literacy

The Philippines has long registered a high literacy rate. As of 2013, adult literacy rate in the country was a high 96.3 percent, according to the Institute for Statistics of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The UNESCO institute defines adult literacy rate as the percentage of the population 15 to 64 years old who can read and write a short, simple statement with understanding, and can make simple mathematical calculations.

Functional literacy, which enables a person to participate fully and efficiently in common activities requiring a reasonable capability to communicate by written language, was lower at 90.3 percent in 2013. A positive development is that this has improved, rising to 91.6 percent as of 2019, as measured by the Philippine Statistics Authority in its household-based Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey or FLEMMS. The PSA said this translates to around 73 million out of 79.7 million belonging to the age group who are functionally literate.

On the other hand, the improvement over seven years could have been greater. An improvement of 1.3 percent is a barely perceptible nudge, and another indication of the problems besetting the country’s education system. Resources obviously play a role: the highest functional literacy rate was registered in Metro Manila, at 96.5 percent, and the lowest, 72.6 percent, in one of the poorest regions, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The 2019 FLEMMS results were released amid the unprecedented implementation of blended learning nationwide to prevent COVID transmission. Authorities are assessing the impact of distance learning on the quality of education and on the more than two million elementary and high school students who failed to enroll for the school year. Recent international assessments have shown Filipino students lagging behind their counterparts in mathematics, science and reading comprehension. Together with Filipinos’ functional literacy, these areas need a dramatic improvement.