THE Second Congressional Commission on Education or the EDCOM 2 expressed elation over the Senate’s approval of the measure seeking to discontinue the use of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3.

The bill also provides for its optional implementation in monolingual classes, reverting the medium of instruction to Filipino and English.

EDCOM 2 Executive Director Karol Mark Yee said the bill complements their initiatives to assess and evaluate the curriculum and instruction in basic education.

“We identified that a key challenge in implementing the Mother Tongue–Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) lies in the centralized structure of education governance within the Department of Education (DepEd), which struggles to accommodate the linguistic diversity of the country,” Yee said.

This comes after the approval of House Bill No. 6717 last February 2023, which also seeks to suspend the use of the mother tongue as the primary medium of instruction in early grade education.

EDCOM 2 Co-Chairperson and co-author of HB 6717 Rep. Roman Romulo emphasizes the significance of this legislative measure.

“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. 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 by the Constitution,” Romulo said.

The implementation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education or MTB-MLE Program of the Department of Education began during the 2012-2013 school year under DepEd DO No. 16, series of 2012.

RA 10533 subsequently formalized the shift to mother tongue-based multilingual education, requiring children in kindergarten and Grades 1 to 3 to be taught in their respective regional or native tongue languages.

By theory, children in the initial years of schooling can comprehend the curriculum if they are taught in the language they already know and understand. However, difficulties were observed in its implementation in the last decade, especially in linguistically diverse areas of the country.