Govt urged to hire unemployed new college grads to tutor students

The government should tap unemployed new college graduates as emergency tutors to over 18 million high school graduates who are functionally illiterate or can read and write but have problems in comprehension and understanding, Akbayan party-list Rep. Perci Cendaña said Friday.

“While we allow the more fundamental reforms to take their course, our government should mobilize thousands of unemployed new college graduates to serve as literacy tutors to serve our basic education students and adult learners as well," Cendaña said in a statement.

"This hits two birds with one stone: we’re able to tackle the problem of illiteracy and at the same time provide short-term employment for our graduates,” he added.

The Philippine Statistics Authority’s 2024 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) report also showed that 5.8 million of Filipinos are “basic illiterate.”

Akbayan party-list first nominee and lawyer Chel Diokno, for his part, said the PSA  FLEMMS results reflects decades of neglect, inequality, and systemic failure to invest in basic education, particularly in far-flung and conflict-affected areas, which should be addressed as soon as possible.

“The findings of the PSA FLEMMS are both alarming and deeply troubling. We must put education as the top priority if we want to solve this crisis,” he said.

“It demands a whole-of-nation approach to address this, with the Department of Education, local governments, civil society, the private sector, and communities working together to solve this matter urgently,” he added.

Former Senator Bam Aquino, who is seeking reelection in the May 2025 polls, agreed.

“This is one of the biggest crises we are facing and we really need to help each other here,” Aquino said.

But for Kabataan party-list first nominee and lawyer Renee Co, the high rate of comprehension failure among high school students is a product of a problematic system: The K-to-12 curriculum which added two more years in high school in hopes of making students employable after high school graduation.

“The problem is there are way too many and incompatible requirements under the K-to-12. Students are exhausted, on top of the fact that there are not enough classrooms and school facilities. Di talaga sila matututo,” she said.

(They won’t really learn under such a situation.)

“This situation could get worse under the new curriculum which focuses on productivity and work immersion, which will take up much of their time to study their lessons. With all these deadlines, the mindset of the students is just to have something to submit, resulting in students who can read and write but struggle in comprehension and cannot think for themselves. This becomes a fertile ground for academic dishonesty," she added.

Co reiterated Kabataan’s call for the scrapping of the K-to-12 program.

“We should not train our students to be like automated machines only for big businesses to gain. We need to review our curriculum and meet the needs and capacity of the students,” she added. —AOL, GMA Integrated News

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