The Department of Education (DepEd) on Sunday stressed the critical need to develop learners’ literacy skills starting in kindergarten to address the high rates of functional illiteracy among Filipino children.

This comes following the release of the 2024 functional literacy, education and mass media survey (FLEMMS) results, which indicated that over 18 million junior high school graduates are considered “functionally illiterate.”

“It’s important that when it comes to teaching, we should start in the early stages — Kindergarten to Grade 3,” said DepEd Assistant Secretary for Curriculum and Teaching Jerome Buenviaje in a radio interview.

“Because there are studies that say that if we don’t focus on that first key stage, the learners will have a hard time catching up when they reach Grade 4 and above,” he added.

In 2023, DepEd launched the revised K-10 curriculum of the K-12 program, which is now being implemented in phases.

The revised curriculum reduced the number of learning competencies by 70 percent from about 11,700 to 3,600, and also decreased the number of subjects, placing greater emphasis on foundational skills like literacy, numeracy and socio-emotional skills for Kinder to Grade 3 learners.

Despite these efforts, Buenviaje noted that tackling functional illiteracy requires a multi-faceted approach, as factors like poor nutrition also contribute to the problem.

“We believe that nutrition and literacy cannot be separated,” Buenviaje said. “That’s why the DepEd is laying a good foundation. We give access to early childhood nutrition and a strong literacy program in K to 3.”

Following the release of the 2024 FLEMMS results, Education Secretary Sonny Angara reaffirmed DepEd’s commitment to ensuring functional literacy for all learners.

“We will not let any learner fall behind in reading and comprehension,” Angara said in a statement. “The recent FLEMMS results on functional literacy highlight what we have long recognized — literacy must be at the heart of our education reforms.”

Meantime, Senator Loren Legarda, commissioner of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II), also called for immediate action to strengthen learners’ foundational competencies.

“This is a painful indictment of our education system,” Legarda said. “It reveals a systemic failure that tells us school attendance and graduation no longer guarantee genuine learning. When millions of learners complete their basic education without the ability to comprehend what they read, they are being sent into the world unprepared with nothing but a diploma that bears no real weight.”

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in 2019 showed 79 million Filipinos were functionally literate under the study’s parameters at the time.

However, the PSA revised its definition of functional literacy for the 2024 FLEMMS to focus solely on the ability to read, write, compute and comprehend, leading to the identification of more junior high school graduates as functionally illiterate.

The previous definition also considered completion of at least junior high school as a measure of functional literacy.

Legarda warned that widespread functional illiteracy could hinder inclusive growth, weaken workforce competitiveness and deepen social inequality.

“An education system that produces graduates without comprehension skills cannot be expected to produce a workforce capable of competing, innovating, or engaging meaningfully in democratic life,” Legarda said.

“This failure not only robs individuals of opportunities but also dampens economic potential and erodes the foundations of participatory governance,” she added.