Dear Editor,

With the long-overdue cessation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) through RA 12027 now a done deal, Congress must ensure that none of its objectionable elements are retained by the Department of Education (DepEd).

It is essential for Congress to ensure that the Department of Education implements the legislation to the letter. In formulating the MTB-MLE curriculum, DepEd took liberties with RA 10533 (the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013) and the Lubuagan Experiment, which serves as the primary study underpinning the language policy.

One of the resulting illegitimate parts of the MTB-MLE is the deferment of the introduction of the English reading competency from the first semester of Grade 1 to the second semester of Grade 2.

The DepEd inserted the part despite the fact that in the Lubuagan Experiment, according to Diane Dekker, one of the researchers who conducted the experiment, reading in English was taught in Grade 1.

The insanity is recorded in page 1 of the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory Manual 2018 as follows: “Under the K-12 curriculum, the pupils are introduced to Reading in Filipino during the first semester of Grade 2 while Reading in English is introduced during the second semester.”

To demonstrate how deadly the DepEd insertion is the delay meant Filipino students who took the 2019 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics, the 2019 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment — those of them who could read, that is — were reading in the test language for two and a half years while their counterparts from other countries have already been reading in their test language for four years. The handicap was evident in the results.

In deciding to defer the competency, the DepEd not only disregarded the Lubuagan Experiment but also ignored common sense.

The DepEd knew that if the country participated in international student assessments, English would be the test language.

That begs the question: How does the DepEd think Philippine education could become globally competitive as envisioned by RA 10533 when the curriculum delays the teaching of the crucial skill of reading in the test language by one and a half years?

The delayed English beginning reading timetable in the K to 12 Curriculum becomes even more absurd when one considers that Filipinos since the American period including the DepEd curriculum experts themselves have been learning to read in English in Grade 1.

There already was more than sufficient evidence of the damage being wrought by the delay during the term of Education Secretary Leonor Briones.

DepEd Memorandum 173, series of 2019, which launched the “Bawat Bata Bumabasa” literacy remediation program cited the following finding: “Low achievement levels in English, Math and Science appear to be caused by gaps in learners’ reading comprehension. This means there are many low-performing learners who could not comprehend Math and Science word problems that are written in English.”

But Briones and her bevy of education experts were so clueless they did not see the obvious connection of the weakness to the absurd MTB-MLE English reading timetable.

The DepEd had an opportune chance to rectify the blunder when it revised the K to 12 Curriculum into the Matatag Curriculum in 2023 but the agency merely reduced the delay by a semester, introducing the competency in the first semester of Grade 2 (Matatag Curriculum English Curriculum Guide, page 32) which is still one full year behind the timetable of other countries. This partial correction indicates that the agency will not let go easily of its devastating education innovation.

Given the grave harm the deferment of the reading in English has caused Filipino students and the country and the DepEd’s notorious obstinacy when it comes to accepting and rectifying its blunders, it is incumbent upon Congress to see to it that the Implementing Rules and Regulations of RA 12027 spells out that reading in English be taught in Grade 1 as it used to be before the DepEd mangled the provision of RA 10533 on the MTB-MLE.

Estanislao C. Albano, Jr.

casigayan@yahoo.com