A significant reform in early education within the Philippines resulted in an unforeseen decrease in test scores and academic performance—highlighting the difficulties that even well-meaning modifications can present and underscoring the necessity of judicious investment during the initial years of education.
The “natural experiment” emerged in 2012, when the Philippine administration launched the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education initiative, which mandated public schools to instruct kindergarten through Grade 3 pupils in a native language selected from a roster of 19 dialects spoken throughout the nation.
Although the reform was well-meaning, aiming to enhance the implementation of local tongues, it inadvertently brought about a deterioration in the general quality of education nationwide, according to a fresh study from the University of Michigan.
The investigation by Dean Yang, a professor specializing in public policy and economics, alongside Thomas Lloyd, a graduate student in economics, examines the prolonged effects of this initiative. Their findings indicate that the shift in the language of instruction was linked to inadequacies in teacher training and available resources, which markedly influenced students’ test scores and overall long-term educational outcomes.
Yang and Lloyd utilized the natural experiment instigated by the new initiative: Unlike most studies centered on specific preschool interventions, they analyzed how a widespread, nationwide alteration in educational quality during the foundational years of mainstream schooling unfolded.
The scholars capitalized on the linguistic breakdown of the student populations in schools prior to the policy’s implementation to anticipate which institutions would be most affected and to disentangle the policy’s influence from potential selection bias.
Even though the Philippines boasts 184 unique spoken languages, Tagalog and English were the predominant languages used for instruction. Following the policy’s introduction, certain schools opted to continue using Tagalog, forming the control group for the research. Conversely, other schools transitioned to a language distinct from Tagalog, thereby constituting the treatment group.
In detail, they identified that students in the treatment schools faced notable dips in their Grade 6 test achievements across all subjects, and by 2020—eight years after the policy’s adoption—they completed one-third fewer years of education compared to students who persisted in receiving instruction in Tagalog.
Pupils attending schools that adopted a new instructional language encountered poorer educational results than their counterparts in institutions where Tagalog was maintained as the medium of instruction. To clarify this decline, the researchers noted that prior to the policy change, educators had been trained in Tagalog and English and classrooms were sufficiently resourced in those languages.
The transition to a different instructional language caused disruption and was linked to implementation hurdles, such as inadequacies in teacher preparation and available educational materials. This ultimately impaired students’ academic performance.
The research emphasizes the critical significance of assessing policies, particularly those concerning early education. The authors contend that these findings serve as a warning applicable beyond the context of the Philippines.
“From a policy perspective, our research underscores the essential need to uphold and enhance the quality of early education,” Yang and Lloyd expressed in their study. “The considerable long-term repercussions associated with even short-term declines in educational quality indicate that policymakers should proceed with extreme caution when enacting reforms that could disrupt early learning settings.”