Indonesia Conference Directory

The Philippines is the last country in Asia and one of only three countries worldwide with a 10-year pre-university cycle (Angola and Djibouti are the other two) thus Republic Act 10533 other known as “Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013” was enacted. The Act provides the K to 12 Basic Education Program law, which covers Kindergarten and 12 years of basic education (six years of primary education, four years of Junior High School, and two years of Senior High School to provide sufficient time for mastery of concepts and skills, develop lifelong learners, and prepare graduates for tertiary education, middle-level skills development, employment, and entrepreneurship (deped.gov.ph). To use the Mother Tongue (MT) as a form of language instruction from kindergarten until the third year of primary school, is another major reform under the K-12 program. Philippines is known to be multi-ethnic, multi-lingual country thus implementation of the MTB-MLE program is quite a challenge. It cannot be denied that teachers play a major role in the success of the language policy. Their positive viewpoint towards the implementation of the MTB-MLE drastically affects the implementation. It is for this reason that this study was being conducted to determine the perception of the teachers in the implementation of the MTB-MLE. This study is a descriptive-qualitative type of research because it focused on the experiences and perception of teachers in implementing the mother tongue based multilingual education in their schools. Descriptive in nature because it describes the implementation of the said program. It records the feelings of the teachers as the direct implementers of the MTB-MLE program. Based on the results of the study, MTB-MLE program is perceived to be an effective program. Teachers are ready as implementers of the program because they had attended seminars and training related to this purpose. The non-availability of instructional materials somehow brought hindrance to the implementation of MTB-MLE. In the case of the instructional materials it should have been pilot/field tested. Department of Education (DepEd) should see to it that when a certain program will be implemented, all kinds of support should be complete. Early preparation should have been instituted. Moreover, there were three major problems met by the teachers: multilingual environment; insufficient instructional materials; and difficulty in translation.