The 2013 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) covered around 36 million population aged 6 to 24 years. According to the survey, one in every ten or about 4 million Filipino children and youth was out-of-school in 2013. Out-of-school children is defined in the FLEMMS as persons aged 6 to 14 years who are not attending school while out-of-school youth as persons aged 15 to 24 years who are not attending school, have not finished any college or post secondary course, and are not working.

Fifty-eight million of the estimated 67 million Filipinos 10 to 64 years old are functionally literate, according to the results of the 2008 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS). In this survey, a functionally literate person is one who can read, write and compute or one who can read, write, compute and comprehend. Persons who completed high school or a higher level of education are also considered functionally literate.