FLEMMS results ineffective in improving Filipino literacy and education
The results of the Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) conducted by the Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA) in 2024, particularly in the case of basic education-age Filipinos, are way off the mark.
First, the survey says the 5-to-9 age group has a basic literacy rate of 78.0 percent. The estimate appears inconsistent with the data cited during a hearing of the Senate committee on basic education last September showing that 38 percent of Grades 1 to 3 learners are nonreaders. Note that the illiteracy data does not include kindergarten, where most if not all learners, could not yet read. Based on the same Grades 1 to 3 illiteracy data, the 20.1 percent illiteracy rate estimate for the 5-to-9 age group is also an understatement.
The FLEMMS also found that 89.9 percent of the 10-to-14 age group have basic literacy. This does not tally with the World Bank (WB) report that as of 2022, the country had a learning poverty incidence of 90.9 percent. The WB defines learning poverty as the portion of 10-year-olds who cannot read and understand simple texts.
It also contradicts the finding of the 2019 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics survey that 27 percent of our Grade 5 students were practically illiterate.
Third, the FLEMMS estimated that the 15-to-19 age group has a functional literacy rate of 76.5 percent. It is the exact opposite of the finding of the Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa) in 2022 that 76 percent of our 15-year-old students fell below Level 2 in reading proficiency. Given the following description from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Level 2 in reading is the threshold of functional literacy: “At Level 2, students begin to demonstrate the capacity to use their reading skills to acquire knowledge and solve a wide range of practical problems.”
The 76 percent functional illiteracy rate established by the Pisa in 2022 is not yet the end of it because according to the 2020 census of population, the 15-to-19 age group accounted for 15.6 percent of the 11 million out-of-school youth population at the time.
The PSA relied anew on the reporting of the literacy status of other members of the household by one respondent and did not make an effort to ascertain the actual literacy status of each of the school-age individuals.
The urgency for the PSA to conduct a functional literacy survey, which reflects reality cannot be overemphasized as the Philippines has become a veritable education basket case with its staggering learning poverty incidence and bottom finishes in international students’ assessments. There has never been an effort to accurately capture and report the actual literacy state of the country’s school-age population, thanks to the obscurantism of the Department of Education and the haphazard functional literacy surveys of the PSA.
If the PSA wants to collect data that could provide “a quantitative framework that will serve as basis in the formulation of policies and programs on the improvement of literacy and education status of the population,” it has to develop a simple tool to determine literacy levels. It should do away with asking a household member the literacy status of other members of the household.
As noticed in the 2019 FLEMMS, the procedure leads to the inflation of basic and functional literacy rates of school-age groups and results that do not serve the purpose of the survey.
Estanislao C. Albano Jr.,
