MANILA, April 4 (Xinhua) -- The 2024 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Friday showed that 90 percent of Filipinos aged 5 years and over had basic literacy.

Basic literacy is the ability of a person to read and write a simple message in any language or dialect with understanding and to compute or perform basic mathematical operations.

Basic literacy rates varied across regions. The Central Luzon region, near Manila, had the highest, at 92.8 percent, while the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in the southern Philippines recorded the lowest, at 81 percent.

Regarding sex, the survey shows that the basic literacy rate was higher for females at 90.9 percent compared to males at 89 percent.

By age group, individuals 20 to 24 years old had the highest basic literacy rate at 96.1 percent. On the other hand, Filipinos 60 years old and over reported the lowest at 76.2 percent.

The country's functional literacy rate in 2024 was 70.8 percent, or 7 out of 10 Filipinos aged 10 to 64 years were functionally literate.

"This translates to around 60.17 million individuals aged 10 to 64 years who can read, write, compute, and comprehend out of the estimated 85 million individuals in the same age group," the PSA said.

Functional literacy is a person's ability to read, write, compute, and comprehend.

In addition to basic literacy, functional literacy includes higher comprehension skills, such as integrating two or more pieces of information and making inferences based on given information.

The Cordillera Administrative Region in the northern Philippines recorded the highest functional literacy rate at 81.2 percent, while the Zamboanga Peninsula region has the lowest at 59.3 percent.

By sex, females showed a higher functional literacy rate at 74.1 percent compared to males at 67.6 percent.

Among age groups, individuals aged 20 to 24 had the highest functional literacy rate at 78.2 percent, while those aged 60 to 64 had the lowest rate at 57.8 percent.

Basic literacy rate is computed for individuals 5 years old and over, while functional literacy rate is computed for individuals 10 to 64 years old. Enditem

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