MARAWI
CITY, Lanao del Sur, Oct. 28 (PIA) --- The Autonomous Region in Muslim
Mindanao (ARMM) registered a significant increase in its basic literacy
rate to 86.1 percent in 2013 from 81.5 percent in 2008. This was based
on the 2013 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey
(FLEMMS) conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Basic
literacy is used for the “initial learning of reading and writing,
which adults who have never been to school need to go through.” The
region’s functional literacy rate also increased to 72.1 percent in 2013
from 71.6 percent in 2008.
The United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization defines functional
literacy as the person’s ability to “engage in activities in which
literacy is required for effective functioning of his group and
community and also for enabling him to continue to use reading, writing
and calculation for his own and the community’s development.”
FLEMMS
is a nationwide survey that presents comprehensive statistics on the
latest status of literacy, education, and mass media exposure of
Filipinos. It “brings together a wide range of information that serves
as a guide for government policy makers, program planners, and decision
makers in providing a much broader scope of action and more focused
program intervention on the target beneficiaries of development
plans.”
Marjuni Maddi, Department of Education in
ARMM assistant secretary for academics, said the increase was associated
to efforts of the agency in solving literacy-related problems.
DepEd-ARMM
is currently implementing ‘Abot-Alam,’ a national program that aims at
relocating “the out-of-school youth (OSY) nationwide who are 15 to 30
years old and who have not completed basic/higher education or who are
unemployed, and to mobilize and harmonize programs, which will address
these OSYs’ needs and aspirations.”
Furthermore, the
agency is also engaged in other interventions such as the Alterative
Delivery Mode (ADM), a joint program with Basic Education Assistance for
Mindanao-ARMM. ADM is being implemented by BRAC Philippines.
The
program established learning centers in poor, conflict-affected, and
disadvantaged communities in the region to give out-of-school children
access to basic education. It provides catch-up opportunities for young
children in remote and deprived communities of the region where regular
public education is not easily accessible.
The project
already built 1,220 learning centers across ARMM including seven
floating learning centers in coastal areas in the island provinces of
Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi. These learning centers cater to 38,084
students from kindergarten to Grades 1 to 3.
Maddi
encouraged everyone to take part in promoting the importance of
education. “Education is everybody’s business. We should not leave it to
our teachers,” he said. The 2013 FLEMMS survey covered about 26,000
sample households in 1,600 barangays in the country. About 1,200 sample
households were taken from ARMM. (BPI/APB/PIA-10)
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