SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian said the Second Congressional Commission on Education will study challenges that hound the K to 12 curriculum, including the implementation of the Mother-Tongue Based Multilingual Education and the spiral progression approach.

The EDCOM II is mandated to conduct a national assessment and evaluation of the curriculum and determine the factors that contributed to the failure to meet the desired local and international standards in education.

While the Department of Education is already reviewing and revising the K to 12 curriculum, Gatchalian said that the EDCOM II’s assessment will formulate education reforms to address the education crisis.

“In my opinion, there are two very contentious issues specific to the K to 12 law, first is the mother tongue and second is the spiral progression,” Gatchalian, co-chairperson of EDCOM II, said.

“We’ll definitely look at these because at the end of the day, what we’re looking at is improving learner performance,” he added.

To ensure mastery and knowledge of skills after each level, the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 or the K to 12 Law mandated the use of the spiral progression approach, where learners are taught simple to more complicated concepts through grade levels in spiral progression.

Gatchalian said that based on the results of international large-scale assessments, such as the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment, Filipino learners lag behind their peers abroad and fail to master basic competencies.

Out of 79 countries that participated in PISA, the Philippines ranked lowest in Reading and second lowest in Mathematics and Science.