A NEW law has been enacted, discontinuing the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction for students in Kindergarten through Grade 3, thereby shifting educational approaches for early childhood learning in the country.
Republic Act (RA) 12027, known as the Act of Discontinuing the Use of the Mother Tongue as Medium of Instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3, amends Sections 4 and 5 of RA 10533, or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013. This law lapsed into effect on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024, without President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s signature.
“The medium of instruction shall revert to Filipino and, until otherwise provided by law, English, pursuant to Article XIV, Section 7 of the 1987 Constitution. The regional languages shall serve as auxiliary media of instruction,” states the law.
The previous legislation mandated that teaching and assessment for students in these grades be conducted in regional or native languages and required the curriculum to align with the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) framework.
Department of Education 7 Director Salustiano Jimenez informed SunStar Cebu on Saturday that while the subject is no longer part of formal instruction, teachers are still permitted to use local languages to aid student understanding when necessary.
“In the new curriculum, the mother tongue is no longer a required subject. However, teachers can still use it in their lessons if it helps students grasp the material,” Jimenez said in Cebuano.
Challenges
Jimenez highlighted challenges in implementing the mother-tongue policy due to Cebu’s diverse linguistic landscape. “Cebuano itself has many variations; if you travel to different areas in Cebu, some words differ significantly. This makes it difficult to standardize teaching materials that work across all communities,” he explained.
He noted that while the mother tongue initially aimed to facilitate learning by using familiar language, its effectiveness has been limited in the Philippines due to varying dialects across regions. “Unlike in countries where one language is uniformly used, such as English, our situation makes the use of the mother tongue more complicated,” he added.
Despite this shift, Jimenez believes students will not struggle with the transition. “I don’t think students will have a hard time learning without the mother tongue. Many already understand Filipino and English,” he stated.
The law specifies that optional use of the mother tongue is limited to monolingual settings where students primarily speak the same native language. Schools implementing this program must adhere to several guidelines, including using official orthography and vocabulary published by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF).
Educational materials such as dictionaries, thesauruses, and children’s books in native languages are also required to support learning. The DepEd, in collaboration with KWF, is tasked with conducting a language mapping project to properly identify and classify learners based on their native language proficiency.
This mapping aims to assess whether monolingual classes exist within a given region and facilitate appropriate deployment of the MTB-MLE program if they do.
The discontinuation of mandatory mother-tongue instruction was introduced to address concerns about resource limitations, including availability of learning materials and trained teachers, according to Jimenez.
Findings from this initiative will be submitted to the President and House of Representatives along with policy recommendations aimed at improving or discontinuing the optional MTB-MLE component.
Jimenez said the mother tongue had already been phased out in Region 7 schools this school year. “We were not surprised by its discontinuation. The focus now is on how teachers deliver lessons. No matter how good or bad a curriculum is, if the teacher is committed, dedicated, and passionate, the outcome will still be positive,” he said.