DAVAO CITY (May 2 )— Around 18.96 million Filipino students who completed junior and senior high school in 2024 cannot read or comprehend a simple story, a shocking data from Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) was presented during a Senate education hearing on Thursday.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, who chairs the Senate education panel, sounded the alarm over the findings, calling the situation a “non-negotiable failure” of the basic education system.
“If you look at the 2024 figure, the PSA detected 18 million students who have graduated from junior and senior high school but are not functionally literate. Meaning they cannot read, write, compute, or comprehend even a basic narrative,” said Gatchalian.
The PSA defines functional literacy as the ability to read, write, compute, and comprehend.
“This should not be happening. The most basic goal of education is to produce functionally literate individuals. That is non-negotiable. Yet, that’s clearly not the case now,” the senator emphasized.
Additional data from the PSA revealed that 24.8 million Filipinos — beyond just recent graduates — are struggling to understand simple texts.
Assistant National Statistician Adrian Cerezo confirmed that only 79 percent of senior high school graduates in 2024 are functionally literate.
“That means 1 in 5 senior high graduates cannot comprehend a basic story. That’s deeply concerning and something we need to urgently address,” Gatchalian said.
The revelation has sparked renewed calls for urgent education reform, teacher retraining, and stronger reading programs nationwide.
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