The Senate approved the final reading on Tuesday for the discontinuation of mother tongue as the medium of instruction for kindergartens and Grade 3 students.
Senate Bill No. 2457, titled "Discontinuing the Use of the Mother Tongue," specifically mandates that the medium of instruction in schools shall revert to Filipino and English. Mother tongue or regional dialects will only serve as supplementary media of instruction, offering the option to implement them in monolingual classes.
Karol Mark Yee, Executive Director of EDCOM 2, highlighted the challenges faced by the Department of Education (DepEd) in implementing Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE), citing issues arising from the centralized structure of education governance within the department.
"The removal of the mandatory use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction is not only practical but inclusive as well, especially in a multilingual and diverse nation like ours," Representative Roman Romulo emphasized.
"The classrooms cannot mandate a mother tongue to a learner because that defeats the philosophy. Let us be unified and use Filipino and English as mediums of instruction in accordance with the Constitution," he added.
Previously, the MTB-MLE program required schools to teach students in their respective native languages under the belief that children learn best in familiar languages. However, the country's linguistic diversity posed significant challenges.
According to the 2020 Population and Housing Census, the Philippines has approximately 245 languages, in contrast to the 19 languages covered by DepEd's MTB-MLE program. Challenges in implementation included integrating Filipino and English for subjects like Math and Science, as well as the scarcity of materials and textbooks in mother tongue languages.
"More than a decade has passed since we implemented MTB-MLE, but a vast majority of our schools are not prepared to roll it out because of issues such as inadequate teacher training and lack of materials," noted Senator Sherwin Gatchalian.
"Discontinuing the use of mother tongue as medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3 is consistent with the evidence: that mother tongue-based learning is effective only in monolingual classrooms," he added.
