Press Release - Gatchalian: Bill discontinuing mother tongue to serve learners' best interest

Senator Win 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 (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. All studies presented during these four public hearings were conducted in monolingual settings. 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. Empirical studies, including key experiments cited by the Department of Education (DepEd) as bases for implementing MTB-MLE in its policies, referred to as the Lingua Franca (1999-2002) and Lubuagan (1999-2011) studies, showed that mother tongue-based learning works in monolingual settings.

Gatchalian also noted that the DepEd's MTB-MLE policy only covers 19 languages while the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) lists 130 languages. Because of these gaps, some schools in