Taxing the children

Under the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) auspices, a multi-institutional squad of 15 researchers led by Dr. Aniceto Orbeta Jr. and Dr. Michael Abrigo presented last month the results of a project launched some five years ago on Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). Mandated nationwide in 2013 under Republic Act No. 10533, MTB-MLE required the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction (MOI) from kindergarten to Grade 3, allowing a gradual transition through Grade 6 before returning to Filipino and English as primary languages of learning. In 2024, RA 12027 stopped the mandatory use of the mother tongue, except in monolingual classrooms, and restored Filipino and English as the MOI.

The national enforcement of MTB-MLE thus lasted only about a decade after over 40 years of advocacy. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization research in the ’70s, which prominently featured the Philippines, triggered the MTB-MLE campaign. Academics and professional bodies of linguist experts pursued the cause. International development agencies provided financial support. The Department of Education (DepEd) pushed the advocacy, launching extensive pilot projects, especially during the term of DepEd Secretary Br. Andrew Gonzalez, FSB, himself a Ph.D. in linguistics from University of California, Berkeley. His successors at DepEd continued these initiatives.

The PIDS papers do not dismiss the negative official and public response to MTB-MLE that led to the RA 12027 backlash. The best plans fail when implementers misunderstand their principles and do not receive the resources assumed in the design. The research does dispute the critical findings of some studies, mainly based on the comparison of children’s school performance before and after the shift to the mother tongue as the MOI. Replacing Filipino and English with a mother tongue MOI would not necessarily improve performance. The mother tongue chosen had to match the language known to the children and the teachers.

This matching was the essential MTB-MLE goal, whose core principles the PIDS research reaffirms. Indeed, the research validates the MTB-MLE approach and the consensus of studies done on it over the last 100 years: a) children learn best when taught in a language they understand; b) the wrong choice of MOI imposes a huge cost on the children and the country; and c) literacy in their mother tongue enables children’s easier learning of Filipino and English.

Borrowing tools from business and welfare economics, Abrigo sought to quantify the effects of MTB-MLE. He argues that language mismatch is a mistake akin to using the wrong materials in a manufacturing process. Both forms of misallocation lead to production losses. But the right MOI does not just make the process more or less efficient. It is a “multiplicative efficiency parameter rather than an additive input.” MTB-MLE affects the effectiveness of all other resources. The best teachers, the most modern classrooms and technology, and the lowest student-teacher ratio will not raise learning outcomes to their highest potential if the children do not understand the language of instruction.

Abrigo estimates that the default Filipino-English MOI regime reduces the children’s potential learning by as much as 27 percent to 45 percent. Properly enforced, MTB-MLE moderates this loss by two-thirds. More learning gains lead to children staying longer in school and raise the continuation rate by 9-12 percentage points. Orbeta cites World Bank (WB) research that translated the cumulative learning cost into a loss of 5.5 years. While other factors may contribute to this loss, the deficit corresponds to the findings of some private schools. Grade 10 DepEd graduates entering their freshman college programs were testing at Grade 5-level reading ability.

The gap between actual and potential gains from the investment of resources imposes, Abrigo suggests, a government “tax” on the children that worsens their “learning deprivation.” The terms fit nicely into the WB’s description of children unable to read at age 10 as suffering “learning poverty.” As in poverty studies, Abrigo goes beyond the number of the poor to look into the relative deprivation among them and its severity among the children most affected.

This PIDS research deserves the widest circulation, but especially among advocates of RA 12027. They should read the papers. But they should also listen to the online presentations. They would hear Tagalog and English, but also Chavacano and a couple of Visayan languages. Discussions of multilingual education issues are fittingly conducted in multiple languages.

The mode of presentation thus reinforces the argument of the research. For listeners unfamiliar with some of the languages used, the webinar provides a taste of the punishment children suffer when compelled to absorb materials in a language they do not understand.