The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) revealed their top findings on the widespread situation involving functional illiteracy among Filipinos a day before 2026.
As posted on their Facebook page, the Commission highlighted the initial results of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) 2024 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS), stating that 24 million Filipinos aged 10 to 64 are functionally illiterate, while 5.8 million are basically illiterate.
The data was shared by Senator Sherwin Gatchalian and was based on an April 30, 2024 FLEMMS report.
Coming in second was centered on the Commission’s and IDinsight’s policy brief entitled “Accelerating Support for Learners with Disabilities,” discovered that while the Inclusive Education Act aligns with international best practices, only 391,089 learners with disabilities were admitted in public schools.
This represents a “critically low” 8% of the estimated 5.1 million children with disabilities in the Philippines.
In addition, only 43% of malnourished Filipino children aged two to four are receiving support from the Supplementary Feeding Program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) due to “structural issues,” and the limitation to facility-based interventions of the Program.
As intervention to the growing malnutrition numbers and “high stunting rate among children under five,” legislators and agency heads are leading for a “system reset” to clarify governance roles and ensure that nutrition programs reach the most vulnerable groups.
EDCOM 2 officials and leaders of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) are also calling for “formalized coordination and clearer guidelines” following the reported confusion regarding funding mechanisms and the autonomy of the BARMM.
This has led to national agencies to pull back essential health and education programs after “mistakenly believing” that the region’s “block grant” replaces national support. Rounding the top 5 of the EDCOM 2’s discovery is the involvement of the Department of Education (DepEd) in 261 interagency bodies. This, according to Education Secretary
Sonny Angara, greatly impacts DepEd’s basic mandate to improve functional literacy and at the same time, forces teachers to do non-teaching tasks.
Other EDCOM 2 revelations include the hiring and promotion process of the government as one of the contributors of poor-quality graduate education programs in the country; disparities in the number of schools supervised and supported by Schools Division Offices, and the current situation of college programs in the Philippines where they focus more on General Education courses while lacking internship and hands-on training.
On the upside, the 18-day Literacy Remediation Program boosted literacy for 96% of struggling grade 3 readers, and the new Joint Circular that updated the previous guidelines of using the Special Education Fund (SEF) to support recent laws such as Republic Act No. 12199, or the Early Childhood Care and Development Program Act, and Republic Act No.
11037, or the National Feeding Program.
