Senator Sherwin Gatchalian on Sunday, March 12 said the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II) will study the challenges hounding the K to 12 curriculum, including the implementation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) to determine where Filipino students can improve in the long run.
Under the law that formed it, EDCOM II is mandated to conduct a National Assessment and Evaluation (NAE) which include, among others, the determination of factors that contributed to the continuing failure in performance of identified subject areas to meet desired local and
international standards in education.
Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, explained that EDCOM II seeks to understand and resolve the results of international large-scale assessments such as the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which found how Filipino
learners are lagging behind their peers abroad and failing to master basic
competencies.
Out of 79 countries that participated in PISA, the lawmaker noted the Philippines ranked lowest in Reading and is second lowest in Mathematics and Science.
Though the Department of Education (DepEd) is already reviewing and revising the K to 12 curriculum, the senator said the EDCOM II’s assessment will formulate proposed education reforms to address the education crisis.
“In my opinion, there are two very contentious issues specific to the K to 12 law, first is the mother tongue and second is the spiral progression,” said Gatchalian, who is also co-chairperson of EDCOM II.
“We’ll definitely look at these because at the end of the day, what we’re looking at is improving learner performance,” he said.
Gatchalian cited a 2019 study by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), which showed that out of 16,287 schools surveyed, only 9 percent conducted the four activities needed to successfully implement MTB-MLE.
These are primarily the writing of big books on language, literature, and culture; documentation of the orthography of the language; documentation of grammar; and documentation of a dictionary of the language.
In order to ensure mastery and knowledge of skills after each level, the lawmaker said the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 or the K to 12 Law (Republic Act No. 10533) mandated the use of the spiral progression approach, an idea wherein students are exposed to a wide variety of topics or disciplines until they have mastered it by studying it repeatedly from simple to more complicated concepts.
