Teachers support use of mother tongue in K to Grade 3

MANILA, Philippines - Public school teachers expressed support to move of the Department of Education (DepEd) to start using 12 major local languages as medium of instruction in public schools from kindergarten to Grade 3 next school year 2012-2013, but said that there should be learning and teaching materials provided to enable proper implementation.

The Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC), a federation of public school teachers’ associations all over the country, said that there was a need to strenghthen the use of mother tongue in the early childhood education in schools all over the country.

TDC said they welcomed the DepEd move at boosting the Mother Tongue-Based Multi-Lingual Education (MTB-MLE) program.

“The use of mother tongue has been proven to be an effective medium of instruction especially in early childhood education,” TDC added.