Gatchalian alarmed most PH schools not ready for mother tongue-based learning

FILE PHOTO: Senator Sherwin Gatchalian. (Senate PRIB)

MANILA, Philippines — Senator Sherwin Gatchalian has expressed alarm after a study showed that less than 10 percent of the country’s schools are prepared to implement the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE).

A 2019 survey by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) showed that only 9 percent of the 16,287 schools hold four activities needed to implement the MTB-MLE.

The activities are writing big books on language, literature, and culture; documentation of the orthography of the language; documentation of grammar; and documentation of a dictionary of the language.

Among the reasons for not implementing the program, the PIDS study noted, are “teachers’ lack of relevant teaching materials, schools’ lack of dictionary of the language, students’ lack of textbooks, and teachers’ lack of expertise in the school’s medium of instruction.”

“Our schools are not ready and our teachers are also not ready because based on DepEd’s (Department of Education) information, only 23% have been trained and that’s not a good sign also in terms of making sure that the mother tongue is successfully implemented on the ground,” Gatchalian pointed out in a statement. Gatchalian is the chair of the Senate committee on basic education.

An assessment of the DepEd indicated that of the 305,099 personnel targeted for mother tongue training, only 72,872 underwent training.

Gatchalian further pushed the DepEd to conduct an impact study on the MTB-MLE implementation.

Under the law, learning instruction for Kindergarten to Grade 3 shall be in the native language of students. — Joshua Emmanuel Go, trainee

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