National Unity Party (NUP) president LRay Villafuerte is bullish on the country’s labor force enhancing further its “A game” as Asia’s youngest and sought-after workers who are proficient in the English language, in light of a new law that put back English, along with Filipino, as the primary medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3 and made regional languages as optional and auxiliary media for teaching or learning in schools.
“For communication and instruction purposes, English and Filipino are back as the primary official languages in our schools while the dialects shall be optional or auxiliary media of teaching in the regions where these dialects are spoken, following the lapse into law of RA (Republic Act) 12027 that discontinued the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3 in our schools,” Villafuerte said.
A former governor of CamSur and now third-term congressman representing the province’s second district, Villafuerte was referring to RA 12027 that lapsed into law last Oct. 10 and reverted to English and Filipino as the medium of instruction in these four grade levels.
This new law, in effect, put off the mandatory use of regional dialects or languages as the primary media of instruction or first language from Kindergarten to Grade 3, as institutionalized 11 years ago under RA 10533, or the “Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013.”
“Although the true intent of RA 10533 to make basic education more accessible and pupil-friendly, especially in the regions where particular dialects are spoken, subsequent developments following this law’s implementation showed that the use of the mother tongue has not led to better students and has, in fact, affected our youth’s competitive edge in the labor force, both here and overseas, as young workers who are high-skilled and supposed to be proficient in English, which is the world’s lingua franca, especially in this Age of the Internet,” Villafuerte said.
Villafuerte expressed the hope that with the return of English, along with Filipino, as the first language for teaching from Kindergarten to Grade 3, the Philippines could enhance the proficiency level of our students in English.
“After a decade of this teaching modality, the use of the mother tongue as set under RA 10533 has sadly proven to be a failed experiment, judging from international studies such as the PISA (Programme on International Student Assessment (PISA) that pointed to our students as among the world’s worst learners,” said Villafuerte.
Since January last year, Villafuerte has pushed a review of the decade-old education policy on the use of the dialect as the main medium of instruction for our gradeschoolers.
PISA is an international assessment done every three years by the Paris-based global forum Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to gauge the reading, mathematics and science literacy of 15-year-old students worldwide.
In the PISA 2022 assessment of students’ performance, Filipino students were found to be among the world’s weakest pupils in reading, math and science, with the Philippines landing at a dismal No. 77 among 81 countries.
“The PISA test results show that the learning skills or proficiencies of our pupils have not improved even if their dialects have become the primary medium of teaching in their respective schools,” Villafuerte said. “Moreover, the use of the mother tongue in lieu of English as the medium of instruction is naturally affecting our kids’ proficiency in the so-called King’s language, which has for decades been a major factor for the high demand for our graduates especially by foreign employers.”
Under Article XIV of the Philippine Constitution, Filipino and English, unless otherwise provided by law, were set as the official languages in schools, while regional languages serve as the auxiliary media of instruction.
But this policy was changed by the enactment of RA 10533, which made the mother tongue as the medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3.
Villafuerte said that one problem with this language policy shift was that the dialects suddenly became the media of instruction in the respective regions were these were spoken, even if our educational system apparently lacked sufficiently trained teachers as well as textbooks and other instructional materials in support of the RA 10533-set Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) education using the regional languages.
RA 12027 reverted to Filipino and English as the first languages in teaching and made MTV-MLE as optional and in monolingual classes, which refers to classes where the learners speak the same mother tongue and are enrolled in the same grade level.
Under this new law, monolingual classes may continue to use the mother tongue as the medium of instruction, but only if: there is an official orthography or spelling system and officially documented vocabulary of the particular mother tongue used that has been developed and published by the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino (KWF), there is literature and grammar books on the language and culture, and there are available teachers in the school who speak and are properly trained to teach that regional language.
Villafuerte expressed the hope that with the return of English, along with Filipino, as the first language for teaching from Kindergarten to Grade 3, the Philippines could enhance the proficiency level of our students in English.
In contrast to our students’ low ranking in the PISA study, the Philippines placed high in the English Proficiency Index (EPI), an online standard English test conducted by EF Education First Ltd., the Swedish company specializing in language training and academic degree programs.
A report revealed that the Philippines’ ranking in the EPI test went up to No. 18 (with a score of 592) in 2020 from the year-before’s No. 27 (with a score of 562).
Our country’s score of 592 was considered of “high proficiency,” according to the report, which was enough for tasks such as making presentations at work, reading newspapers or understanding shows on television.
Villafuerte said that our workers’ skill in English has enabled them to work abroad or here in the country as outsourced professionals in IT, healthcare, customer care and other industries.
The former governor said that in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector, for instance, the Philippines has been a top leader in this global industry because our country has been known for having, among others, a cost-efficient labor and an educated workforce with communication proficiency in English.
With English taught in schools, he said the Philippines has become one of the world’s largest English-speaking economies and over 300,000 graduates enrich our country’s professional pool each year
Back in January 2023, Villafuerte sought a review of the medium of instruction used in our schools, after President Marcos heralded in his overseas trip then to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum (WEF) the Philippines’ demographic “sweet spot”—comprising a formidable work force of mostly young, tech-savvy and English-speaking Filipinos as one of its competitive edge as a post-pandemic investment destination.
For Villafuerte, such a review of the medium of instruction gained greater urgency following President Marcos’ remarks in a one-on-one dialogue with WEF president Borge Brende that the Philippines boasted a “demographic dividend” advantage of having Asia’s youngest workforce that is well-trained, sophisticated, on equal footing with that of any other country in terms of technological know-how, and proficient in English.
Villafuerte said that reforming the learning system in schools was necessary “to allow Filipino workers to preserve our ‘A’ game in English, so to speak, given that this language is known as the world’s lingua franca because there are reportedly 350 million people across the globe who speak it as their first language and 500 million more who use it as their second language.”
He noted that proficiency in English has opened a lot of opportunities for those looking for jobs as well as for workers to keep their current employment or get promoted, as most corporations require from their employees and would-be hires a fair amount of skill in this language.
“Keeping our labor force highly attractive for local and international employers is one means for the Marcos administration’s desired post-Covid economic transformation to succeed, as it would go a long way in, first, attracting more overseas investors to set up shop here; and, second, for international businesses to keep hiring our workers and thereby increasing the dollar remittances of migrant Filipinos,” Villafuerte said.
Villafuerte recalled that President Marcos himself stressed in his first SONA (State of the Nation Address) in 2022 that English was the language of the Internet, which has become the global marketplace, and that foreign employers have always favored Filipino workers because of our command of the English language.
Stressing in his first SONA the need to equip our students with the materials necessary for effective teaching, President Marcos said: “Foreign employers have always favored Filipino employees because of our command of the English language. This is an advantage that we must continue to enjoy.”
President Marcos pointed out that “the internet has now become the global marketplace. Not only for goods services but also for ideas, even extending to our own personal interactions … The language of the internet—for better or for worse—is English. Therefore, the question of our medium of instruction must be continuously re-examined to maintain that advantage that we have established as an English-speaking people.”
