00:00Last year's Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media survey bared what is a truly alarming and frighteningly serious problem.
00:0819 million high school students who took the test either had a hard time or outright could not fully comprehend a simple sentence on the page.
00:18Now the onus is on DepEd Chief Sonny Angara who has a Herculean task on his hands to reverse this growing trend as our Kenneth Paciente reports.
00:31The Department of Education or DepEd continues to address the challenge of reading comprehension among students in the country.
00:37This comes after the Philippine Statistics Authority or PSA reported during the Senate Basic Education Committee hearing yesterday
00:43that nearly 18 million junior high school graduates struggle to understand what they read.
00:48This is based on the 2024 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey or FLEMS.
00:54According to DepEd, they are fully aware of this challenge and will implement necessary education reforms to ensure that no student is left behind, especially in reading and comprehension.
01:05The agency has intensified its initiatives including remedial and literacy programs in schools, which they say are based on data, to ensure effectiveness.
01:13In fact, the Education Department has already implemented the Bawat Bata Makakabasa Program or BBMP.
01:21It is a 20-day program initially to be launched in the Zamboanga Peninsula designed to help children who need reading support.
01:27Evidence-based strategies will be used to help students learn to read and improve their reading comprehension.
01:32Volunteers and parents will also help implement the program.
01:35DepEd also emphasized that teachers have been instructed to enhance their teaching and assessment methods.
01:40They are now focusing on developing students into critical thinkers, ensuring that their skills align with the needs of the modern era.
01:47DepEd said that it is committed to resolving this issue, not only to prepare students for the future, but to ensure that they become functionally literate individuals as well.
01:57Kenneth, Paciente, from the National TV Network, for a new and better Philippines.
