SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian maintained that discontinuing mother tongue use as medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3 will serve the best interest of the country’s learners and teachers.

He pointed to the gaps in the implementation of the mother tongue-based multilingual education or MTB-MLE, which has been in place for over a decade, as a significant factor driving the need for this policy shift.

“Mahigit sampung taon na nating ipinapatupad ang mother tongue policy, pero malinaw sa ebidensya na hindi ito naging epektibo sa ating mga paaralan. Imbes na pilitin nating ipagpatuloy ang isang bigong polisiya, mas mahalagang bigyan natin ang ating mga guro ng kalayaan na gumamit ng wikang akma sa pangangailangan ng kanilang mga mag-aaral,” said Gatchalian.

The chairperson of the Senate Committee on Basic Education recalled that the Committee conducted four public hearings on MTB-MLE, where stakeholders were given the opportunity to establish if the policy works in a multilingual setting like the Philippines.

Aside from countless consultations with education stakeholders, Gatchalian also conducted four focus groups — one each in the National Capital Region, Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao — with teachers, school heads, supervisors, regional directors, and parents in some areas.

The appropriateness of using the mother tongue as medium of instruction in multilingual contexts is also not supported by theory.

The other qualitative accounts that were studied by the Committee advocate the use of the MT in linguistically homogeneous settings such as rural communities and communities of ethnolinguistic minorities.

Gatchalian also noted that the DepEd’s MTB-MLE policy only covers 19 languages while the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino lists 130 languages.

Because of these gaps, some schools in the country are forced to use regional languages that children are unfamiliar with, which goes against the principle of starting where the children are.

Under Senate Bill No. 2457, which was passed on third and final reading, the medium of instruction shall revert to Filipino and, unless otherwise provided by law, English, which is consistent with Article XIV, Section 7 of the 1987 Constitution.

The bill also provides that regional languages will be used as auxiliary medium of instruction. Schools, however, have the option to use the mother tongue in monolingual classes in Key Stage 1.

Instead of prescribing a ‘one size fits all’ solution, Gatchalian said schools will have more flexibility to use languages based on their learners’ needs.