Functional illiterate Filipinos doubled to 24.8 M in 2024 —EDCOM 2

The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) expressed alarm over the Department of Education’s (DepEd) involvement in over 200 interagency bodies, which supposedly diverted the agency from addressing “functional illiteracy.”

The EDCOM 2 recently conducted a hearing on the charter and mandates of DepEd, during which Education Secretary Sonny Angara disclosed that the department currently sits in 261 interagency bodies, chairing at least 20, and attending 21 jointly with the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Technical Education Skills Development Authority (TESDA). 

The EDCOM 2 said this was a “huge leap” from the 63 bodies it originally reported in its Year One Report, “Miseducation: The Failed System of Philippine Education.”

The EDCOM 2 is the Congressional body mandated to undertake a comprehensive national assessment and evaluation of the performance of the Philippine education sector. 

During the hearing, the body emphasized how the trifocalization of what used to be the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) in 1994 to establish the three education agencies —DepEd, CHED, and TESDA, “was primarily intended to enable DepEd to concentrate on addressing students’ functional literacy.”

“In 1993, the first Congressional Commission on Education underscored the need to enable the agency to focus solely on basic education to address the 14.5 million functionally illiterates in the 1990s,” the EDCOM 2 said.

“However, 30 years later, despite the restructuring of education agencies, the number of functional illiterate Filipinos almost doubled to 24. 8 million,” it said, citing the revised definition of functional illiteracy in the 2024 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS).

'Coordination spread thin'

Functional illiteracy, as defined in the FLEMMS, refers to the lack of comprehension to use basic reading and writing skills in everyday life.

The EDCOM 2 also said that despite the intents of the first EDCOM to enhance the focus of DepEd on functional literacy leading to the establishment of separate agencies including the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and the Philippine Sports Commission, since 2001, more than 150 new laws and executive issuances have since been passed adding responsibilities to the agency. 

Angara described the issue during EDCOM 2 hearing on DepEd’s charter as “coordination spread thin”. 

“We note also that this added responsibilities, has impacted both the agency, but also schools, with teachers taking on additional roles including the implementation of vision screening for instance based on RA 11358, as well as coordination of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) requirements, in light of RA 11310, among others,” said EDCOM Executive Director Karol Mark Yee.

The body said that the DepEd’s non-teaching responsibilities have aggravated the deficit of support staff in schools, resulting in teachers needing to absorb these ancillary and administrative tasks such as managing school canteens and school-based feeding programs (requiring coordination with the DOH and DSWD), acting as Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) Coordinator (mandated by RA 10121), and overseeing the National Drug Education Program (NDEP). 

The EDCOM 2 stressed that non-teaching work consumes substantial time, diverting teachers from instruction and impacting the quality of learning outcomes.

The Education Department reported that its current responses rely on streamlining these bodies under an Education Cluster within the Office of the President’s cabinet. 

The DepEd has also assigned DepEd Executive Committee members to lead or represent the Department in key inter-agency councils for more strategic engagement. 

The agency also limits participation to “high-impact, mission-aligned councils” only. 

Administrative personnel

Another solution being explored by the Education Department is the hiring of additional administrative personnel to support teachers. 

Administrative Officers (AOs) in schools are intended to ease the burden teachers face in balancing instructional, non-instructional, and inter-agency-related duties. 

During the hearing, Angara said that DepEd seeks to close the gap so that "every public school will have at least one admin officer" by 2026. 

DepEd further reported that, since 1982, the agency had its mandates multiplied, including 21 laws covering curriculum and teaching, 10 laws covering culture and civics, 18 laws covering health and safety, and hundreds of laws establishing, converting, or separating schools. 

Some laws also lack funding. These include the implementation of the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program under RA 12028, the Alternative Learning System under RA 11510, Mental health and Well-Being Promotion under RA 12080. Angara reported that gaps remain in the funding of these programs. 

“We tried to calculate and do a rough estimate of, if we were to fully fund all of the laws on education, it would cost over a trillion pesos, your honor. So we're trying to have a plan for that going forward,”Angara said. 

EDCOM 2 Standing Committee member Father Lawrence Llona noted that this is true, especially for the Alternative Learning System. 

Senator Loren Legarda, for her part, also noted that the allocation for ALS is 78.4 million, while the requirement under the law is 30.5 billion (since every city and municipality must have an ALS center).

Legarda committed to fund an increase in the allocation for Indigenous People's (IP) education and the Alternative Learning System (ALS). 

She requested that Secretary Angara provide a letter with funding recommendations for ALS and IP Ed to the Senate Finance Chair, assuring him that she would champion the cause.

"I would be happy to receive that and fight for it...I commit that I will fund the IP Ed increase and the ALS and the schools as well. In fact, I'm on the phone now because we're submitting our amendments at least for several districts in the country. But a letter of the secretary focusing on classroom rooms and school buildings, ALS and IP Ed and the others that you mentioned including...textbooks as well,” she said. —VAL, GMA Integrated News