By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
In his column ‘Pied-piping’ our learners to failure” in the January 12, 2020 issue of this paper,
lawyer and former congressman Matanggol Gunigundo I, one of the principal authors of Republic Act No. 10533 known as the Enhanced Basic Education Curriculum of 2013, cited international studies which suggest our language of instruction policy is responsible for our underachievement in Mathematics and Science. “We figured among the worst five countries in the achievement tests in the 1995, 1999 and 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. During those years, we were ranked best in using a non-native language of instruction (LOI),” he wrote.
The recently released results of the 2019 TIMSS proves Gunigundo and the Department of Education (DepEd) which also takes the studies as gospel truth are gullible. The country did even worse in the survey into the seventh year of using vernacular as language of instruction for Mathematics and Science. In Mathematics, the 2019 batch scored 297 as against the 2003 pupils’ 358 for a different of 61 points or 17.03 percent while in Science, our takers in 2019 got 249 versus the 332 of their 2003 counterparts for a difference of 83 points or 25 percent. From third to the last in both subjects in 2003, this time we landed at the bottom in both subjects.
The best and most logical explanation as to why our performance in the TIMSS dropped with the MTB-MLE is the finding in the 2018 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM), the six-nation survey on the literacy of Grade 5 pupils in reading, writing and mathematical literacy, that 27 percent of our Grade 5 pupils could not read with only 10 percent meeting the SDG indicator in reading. If that’s the proportion of non-readers and successful readers in our Grade 5 population, naturally, the situation in Grade 4 would be worse. Students who could barely read or not even read at all are not expected to score well in tests.
So Gunigundo must explain why hordes of pupils could not read in the MTB-MLE when he wrote in the explanatory note of his H.B. No. 162 also known as the Gunigundo Multilingual Bill of the 15th Congress as follows: “Language scholars around the world unanimously say that children learn best in their own languages, not in a foreign language.” Too, the DepEd should tell the country whatever happened to these supposed advantages of the language policy contained in DepEd Order No. 74, series of 2009 which institutionalized the MTB-MLE: “a. First, learners learn to read more quickly when in the first language; b. Second, pupils who have learned to read and write in the first language learn to speak and read in a second language (L2) and third language (L3) more quickly than those who are taught in a second or third language first.”
Gunigundo, the DepEd and other MTB-MLE exponents must tell us how come on the seventh year of the language policy, an international assessment group tells us 27 percent of our Grade 5 pupils could not read when the teaching of reading was supposed to be a forte of MTB-MLE.
In the same article, Gunigundo also wrote: “The linguistic practices of top Pisa performers disprove the assumption that Filipinos will learn reading, science and mathematics only through English. Teaching the curriculum solely in English may actually be counterproductive.” Apparently, he did not read the findings of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) in their study “Starting Where the Children Are’: A Process Evaluation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education Implementation” released last year that public schools have lost their competitiveness in regional contests conducted in English as private school pupils understand the questions better. According to the study, private schools do not implement the MTB-MLE as they “claim that the use of English for delivering content is successful, evidenced by their consistent winning in regional competitions over public schools where English, and not the MT, is used.”
And it may interest Gunigundo that while sticking with the BEP, private schools have no non-readers in Grade 2 onwards except when they have transferees from public schools. All their own pupils read at the end of Grade 1 unlike in the public schools where even the secondary is heavily burdened with non-readers. It is common for public high schools to have at least one special class for non-readers.
We ask DepEd how they reconcile the mass production of non-readers under the MTB-MLE with the mandate of RA No. 10533 for our education to be of the quality to allow our students and graduates to be globally competitive.
Clearly, Gunigundo and the DepEd owe the nation an apology for the adoption of a dud and damaging educational program and still insanely batting for its perpetuation despite the untold harm it is already inflicted and is inflicting on our learners as well as on the reputation of the country as nurturer of its young.
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