File photo.
QUEZON CITY (PIA) — The use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction for kindergarten to grade 3 is set to be discontinued, as the bill for this purpose has lapsed into law.
Under the new law, Republic Act (RA) No. 12027, “[t]he medium of instruction shall revert to Filipino and, until otherwise provided by law, English, while the regional languages will serve as a supplementary medium of instruction.”
RA No. 12027 amends Sections 4 and 5 of RA No. 10533 or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, which mandates that teaching assessment for Kindergarten up to Grade 3 students shall be taught in regional or native language and that the curriculum must conform to the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE).
Monolingual classes may continue using the Mother Tongue as a medium of instruction as long as it complies with the following requirements:
- An official orthography is developed and published by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF);
- An officially documented vocabulary published by the KWF such as glossary, dictionary, encyclopedia or thesaurus;
- Literature on languages and culture, such as big books, small books, picture stories, or wordless picture books; Grammar book; and
- The availability of teachers in the school who speak and are trained to teach in the mother tongue.
A monolingual class is composed of learners who speak the same mother tongue and are enrolled in the same grade level in a given school year.
According to the law, monolingual class refers to a group of learners who speak the same Mother Tongue and are enrolled in the same grade level in a given school year.
The law tasks the Department of Education (DepEd) to develop, in consultation with the KWF, a mapping policy after one year of the law’s effectivity to assess and classify learners based on their native language “to systematically determine the existence of monolingual classes per school year.”
RA 12027 likewise mandates that the DepEd “shall conduct a review of the optional implementation of the MTB-MLE Program in monolingual classes” three years after the effectivity of the law. (PIA DMD)
