Long way to go for education targets of gov’t

BAGUIO CITY—The Aquino administration is tapping major corporations and every parent-teachers’ association in the country to help raise enrollment and keep children in school at an annual rate of 3 percent for the next five years.

President Benigno Aquino III needs the extra effort to send and keep every Filipino child in school by 2015 and make sure they finish primary education.

The latest Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) showed slight improvements in the population’s literacy with nine out of 10 Filipinos functionally literate.

Rating game

Metro Manila topped the regions with a 94.6 percent functional literacy rating, followed by Calabarzon with 93.5 percent, Central Luzon, 92.1 percent and the Ilocos region, 88.6 percent. The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was at the bottom with 71.6 percent literacy.

Carmelita Ericta, administrator of the National Statistics Office (NSO), said experts believe Filipinos between 10 and 64 years old should be reasonably literate. This age group comprises 67 million of the population (projected at 94 million by 2010).

Functional literacy

The 2008 FLEMMS also showed that 58 million (86 percent) of that age group are functionally literate or can read, write and operate mathematical equations as they go about their day-to-day activities.

In the 2003 literacy survey, 84.1 percent of that age group ranked as functionally literate.

The 2008 report said 96 percent of the same age group have basic literacy, or command rudimentary skills in reading and writing. NSO’s 2003 FLEMMS established that 93 percent of the same age group had basic literacy skills.

Long way to go

But the 2008 data meant that government still has a long way to go to meet its targets, said Edicio de la Torre, president of the Education-For-All Foundation (EFA) and the Education Network Philippines (E-Net).

Ericta said the survey results showed a “reasonably high” literacy rate for this generation, but the details revealed why it was not much higher.

There were 39 million young Filipinos aged 6 to 29 in 2008 and 12.3 million of them did not attend school, she said

She said 24 percent (2.9 million) of youths who did not go to school claimed they could not afford tuition, 22 percent (2.7 million) elected to find work and 20 percent (2.4 million) had no interest in school.

She said educational attainment helped shape literacy. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon –Philippine Daily Inquirer