Senator Sherwin Gatchalian (Senate PRIB)

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian is seeking a national impact evaluation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE), 10 years after the K to 12 Law mandated the implementation of the policy. Gatchalian lamented that there has been no national impact evaluation after a decade of implementing the MTB-MLE. According to Gatchalian, the national impact evaluation should answer whether or not the MTB-MLE policy improved early grade literacy in mother tongue, English, and Filipino. Gatchalian added that the evaluation should also answer whether or not the use of mother tongue improved learning outcomes in other learning areas such as math and science. The impact evaluation should also identify the long-term effect of the MTB-MLE on learning and non-cognitive outcomes from key stages 2 to 4, he said. Citing his consultations with schools in Pangasinan, Cebu, Davao, and Metro Manila, Gatchalian pointed out that there are difficulties in implementing the mother tongue policy in linguistically diverse areas. The senator said that the policy might be discriminatory against learners who are not fluent in the regional language chosen as the medium of instruction. Instead of learning in their first language, a large proportion of learners are forced to study materials and participate in class discussion using languages with which they are not familiar. The senator emphasized the case of Marahan West Elementary School in Davao City where Sinugbuanong Binisaya is the mother tongue used as medium of instruction. Around 40 percent of key stage 1 learners, however, use Davao Bisaya and the rest use other languages. Gatchalian also pointed out the significant decline of learner scores from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003 and 2019, which saw an absolute decline of 61 points in Math and 83 points in Science. When other variables such as the language of assessment, curriculum coverage, socioeconomic status, and teacher quality are controlled, Gatchalian said that the decline in learner outcomes observed might be partially attributable to the implementation of the MTB-MLE, a hypothesis that he said needs further validation.