By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
Note: This is a letter to Atty. Joseph Noel Estrada who, as managing director of the association,, represented the Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA) during the meeting of the technical working group assisting the Committee on Basic Education and Culture on the deliberation of House Bill No. 6405 on March 22, 2021. Authored by Baguio Representative Marquez Go, the bill sought the abolition of the Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) policy. The letter was prompted by the observation that while the experience of private elementary schools is one of the most potent evidence proving the utter folly of the MTB-MLE, Estrada was looking for definitive findings on the impact of the policy on learning.
We fully support your recommendation during the House Bill No. 6405 TWG meeting on March 19, 2021 to subject the Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) policy and the K to 12 Program itself to a third party assessment and monitoring.
We believe that if third party monitoring and assessment were a part of our basic education system, we could have avoid a lot of problems including the reading crisis. Despite the Every Child a Reader Program which prohibits the promotion of learners who could not read to Grade 4 (DepEd Memorandum No. 342, series of 2004) and the yearly conduct of the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory reading assessment, illiteracy crept up the grades for more than a decade and had it not been for the media exposing the phenomenon in 2018 when there was already a growing non-reader population in high school, the problem would have stayed under wraps longer. But even after the media uncovered the problem, the country still does not know its full extent because the DepEd treats reading assessment results for internal purposes only (Inquirer report: shoddy, malicious Briones, DepEd website, February 19, 2020) thus the only concrete data we have so far is the finding of the 2019 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics that 27 percent of our Grade 5 pupils cannot read.
In the event the investigation is carried out, we urge it ferrets our the truth on the shocking deterioration of reading literacy during the implementation of the MTB-MLE which we mentioned in our paper presented during the TWG meeting (attached) because the development it totally unexpected given the promise of the MTB-MLE to quicken the learning of reading.
Regarding the need for definitive findings on the impact of the MTB-MLE on learning, we strongly suggest that the study look into the experience of private schools. For one, their explanations as to why they decided not to adopt the MTB-MLE would be enlightening given the fact that private schools need to maintain a certain quality of education in order to survive. The finding of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies in its study Starting Where the Children Are: A Process Evaluation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education Implementation that under the MTB-MLE, private schools now consistently win in regional contests given in English should also be reconciled with the claim of the MTB-MLE it facilitates the learning of new languages.
Earnestly hoping the activity will be undertaken soonest for the sake of truth and the best interest of Filipino school children.
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