Senate OKs bill discontinuing use of mother tongue from Kinder to Grade 3

The Senate on Tuesday approved on third and final reading a bill making the mother tongue as medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3 optional.

Senate Bill 2457 was approved with 22 affirmative votes, zero negative votes and zero abstention.

SB 2457 seeks to revert the medium of instruction to Filipino and, until otherwise provided by law, English pursuant to the 1987 Constitution.

Regional languages will only serve as an auxiliary or supplementary media of instruction.

The bill requires the Department of Education to conduct a review of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) in monolingual classes after three years of effectivity of the proposed law.

The review shall include learner assessment, teacher recruitment and matching, development of learning resources published in the mother tongue, capacity-building efforts for teachers and funding requirements for the program.

This review shall be reported by the DepEd to the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives not later than June 30 following the year of the review.

Senator Joel Villanueva, co-author of the measure, welcomed the passage of SB 2457.

"Through language mapping, we will be able to cluster together our students in the same grade level and with a common language into 'monolingual classes' to ensure that our MTB-MLE will be more effective," Villanueva manifested after the passage. —Hana Bordey/KBK, GMA Integrated News