The House Committee on Basic Education and Culture renewed its call to the Department of Education (DepEd) on Friday to reduce the number of learning competencies and focus solely on core subjects — reading comprehension, math, and science — to best ensure that students become functionally literate.

Pasig Rep. Roman Romulo, chairperson of the panel, reiterated the proposal on the heels of a report by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) that revealed that a staggering 18.96-million students who finished junior and senior high school can read but have problems with comprehension and understanding.

These students were called “functionally illiterate.”

Roman, also a co-chair of the Second Congressional Commission on Education, attributed this predicament to the “congested” basic education curriculum.

“It’s the education system that we have. We have too many competencies, too many subjects,” he said in an interview. “We have been talking about critical thinking, forgetting that before we reach critical thinking, we have to first pass through the basics, which are functional literacy, basic literacy. I think that’s where we lost our way.”

Roman said he has consistently suggested to DepEd to decongest the competencies in Grades 1 to 3 and Grades 11 and 12, as being jampacked leaves little room for learners to master crucial subjects.