Government urged to improve students’ ‘foundational learning’

MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Loren Legarda yesterday called on the government to improve students’ “foundational learning” to address the “functional illiteracy” affecting 18.9 million graduates.

Legarda made the call for improving learners’ foundational competencies as a commissioner of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II).

She lamented the results of the Philippine Statistics Authority’s 2024 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS), which found that 18.9 million Filipinos who graduated from the basic education system in 2024 were “functionally illiterate,” which was the subject of a recent Senate basic education committee hearing.

“This is a painful indictment of our education system. It reveals a systemic failure that tells us school attendance and graduation no longer guarantee genuine learning,” Legarda said.

“When millions of learners complete their basic education without the ability to comprehend what they read, they are being sent into the world unprepared with nothing but a diploma that bears no real weight,” she added.

The PSA’s FLEMMS is a nationwide, household-based survey conducted every five years. It adopted a new methodology for assessing basic and functional literacy in the Philippines.

Under its revised definition, “functional literacy” includes not only the ability to read, write, and compute, but also of possessing higher-level comprehension skills, such as integrating two or more pieces of information and making inferences based on the given information.

Legarda said children should be assisted in their learning during their formative years as a student so that they could graduate with better comprehension skills.

“Foundational learning, as EDCOM II has consistently advanced, must be our top priority. If a child cannot read or lacks foundational competencies by Grade 3, they begin to fall behind in every subject, because all learning builds on the ability to understand and process text,” the senator said.

“Reading with comprehension is the cognitive engine that drives independent thinking, curiosity, and lifelong learning. It empowers children not only to answer questions, but to ask the right ones, and to navigate the world with insight and agency,” Legarda added.

She warned that “functionally illiterate” graduates could face difficulties in finding jobs in a competitive labor market.