SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian sought the evaluation of the implementation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Program of the Department of Education to assess its effectiveness.

The senator cited serious challenges in linguistically diverse areas, particularly for students who have yet to learn the local dialect.

In a privilege speech, Gatchalian said that based on data, the implementation of the mother tongue policy in linguistically diverse areas may be discriminatory against learners who are not fluent in the regional language.

The senator said that in some regions, the Department of Education chose the regional language as the mother tongue medium of instruction.

“I hope that this speech will be the catalyst for a swift national impact evaluation on the implementation of the MTB-MLE so that we can craft necessary policy reforms and amend the MTB-MLE provision of the K to 12 Law as may be required,” Gatchalian said.

He promised to conduct an inquiry on the implementation of the program even while Congress is on recess.