THE Senate has approved on third and final reading a measure seeking to discontinue the use of the mother tongue as medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3.
The Senate unanimously approved Senate Bill 2457 on Tuesday, July 23, 2024, seeking to revert the medium of instruction in classes to Filipino and English while regional dialects will only serve as an auxiliary or supplementary media of instruction.
The measure also requires the Department of Education (DepEd) to conduct a review of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) in monolingual classes three years after its enactment, covering the assessment of students, teacher recruitment and matching, development of learning resources published in the mother tongue, capacity-building efforts for teachers, and funding requirements for the program.
The report on the review will be submitted to the President and both houses of Congress not later than June 30 following the year of the review.
The implementation of the MTB-MLE Program of the DepEd began during the 2012-2013 school year under DepEd Department Order 16, series of 2012.
Republic Act 10533 subsequently formalized the shift to mother tongue-based multilingual education, requiring children in kindergarten and Grades 1 to 3 to be taught in their respective regional or native tongue languages.
By theory, children in the initial years of schooling can comprehend the curriculum if they are taught in the language they already know and understand.
However, difficulties were observed in its implementation in the last decade, especially in linguistically diverse areas of the country. (TPM/SunStar Philippines)