SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian urged the Department of Education to create a strategic plan for the implementation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education.

The chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education made the call after DepEd admitted that it has not conducted any study in over 10 years since the policy has been implemented.

During a Senate hearing, Gatchalian asked the education department about its vision for the implementation of mother tongue, which is being taught as a subject from Grades 1 to 3 and is also used as a medium of instruction.

Dr. Rosalina Villaneza, chief Education Program Specialist of the DepEd-Bureau of Learning Delivery, said that they want to teach all languages that learners need.

“To be able to achieve all those languages that are needed for K to 3. If you look at the previous presentation, meron na po tayong 20, 70, and 40 languages na nasa different stages na po. Iyong 20 is for final na actually siya, then 70 for review. We’re working on that. Our vision is really to address because no child should be left behind,” she said.

The DepEd official added that they are looking at 172 languages, as there are only 19 languages that have books being used in schools nationwide.

At the same time, Villaneza admitted that there is a mismatch between the concept and teaching of MTB-MLE.

“Ang konteksto noon po is misunderstanding of the concept of bilingual. Kasi ang bilingual po sa other countries is referring to the national – the minority and the majority. Pero dito po sa atin, iba pa iyong meaning ng bilingual. Kasi sa atin po, when we implemented bilingual education, we talk about Filipino – which is the national language – and English,” Villaneza said.