Progressive teachers denounced the final enactment of the bill abolishing the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) program for kindergarten to third grade. Republic Act No. 12027 lapsed into law on October 10, 30 days after the bill was received by Malacañang.

The Alyansa ng mga Tagapagtanggol ng Wikang Filipino (Tanggol Wika)’s 8-point critique stated the reasons for their opposition to the abolition of MTB-MLE. The alliance emphasized that this “contradicts the natural law of learning that children learn to read and write faster when their native language is used in teaching.”

According to Tanggol Wika, the abolition of MTB-MLE is contrary to the recommendations of almost all learning and education experts. They also said that abolishing the program does not address the deficiencies in the implementation of MTB-MLE from 2013-2023. The government should be held accountable for the lack of funding to improve the program, it said.

In a Senate hearing in 2022, the Department of Education revealed that only 78,872 of the target 305,099 educators were trained in using “mother tongue” as a teaching method. A study by the Philippine Institute of Education found that less than 10% of the over 16,000 schools surveyed followed the main aspects of MTB-MLE implementation, including orthography, grammar, teaching materials, and dictionaries.

“Contrary to the claims of congressmen and senators who abolished MTB-MLE, there are areas where it has produced high scores for students,” the alliance said. They cited the higher mean percentage score of students who used their local language compared to those who used English in the Early Language, Literacy, and Numeracy Assessment (ELLNA).

They added that the abolition of MTB-MLE is a step backward that will undermine the successes of using the native language in education, and will result in a further decline in the quality of education in the country. It is also a significant blow to the country’s dying languages.

“When will you listen to the teachers themselves? The congressmen and senators who abolished MTB-MLE just pretend to be experts,” said Dr. David Michael San Juan, Tanggol Wika convenor and ACT Teachers Party-list third nominee.

Only three representatives from Makabayan in the House of Representatives voted against the bill. Makabayan is also pushing for a proposal to use the native language in all branches and agencies of the government.

“Abandoning the mother tongue is a betrayal of the country’s diverse languages and their contribution to the country’s diverse culture,” ACT Teachers Party-list representative and Makabayan Coalition senatorial candidate Rep. France Castro said.

No senator opposed the MTB-MLE abolition.