Improving Pupils’ Mathematics Achievement Through Mother Tongue Based-Multilingual Education

Mother Tongue (MT) as the medium of teaching and learning (MOTL) through the Mother Tongue Based-Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) is one of the curriculum reform programs in the Philippines’ K to 12 Basic Education. This program is in compliance with the Department of Education (Deped) Order No. 16, s. 2012, which aims for cognitive development focusing on higher order thinking skills and academic development to prepare pupils in acquiring mastery of the competencies, specifically, to improve learning of Mathematics from Kindergarten to Grade 3. The declining performance of pupils in Mathematics has been alarming, thus, the researchers attempted to determine the effectiveness of MTB-MLE as a medium of teaching in Mathematics to improve pupils’ achievement. The researchers have a special interest in determining the effectiveness of MTB-MLE as a medium of teaching in mathematics in relation to pupils’ achievement in Filipino and English as the language of assessment. This descriptive method research is focused on the use of researcher-made Mathematics Achievement Tests, supported with document analysis of relevant school forms, and interview with teachers as sources of data. Purposive sampling was employed considering only the big primary public schools, with fifteen grade three Mathematics Teachers (n = 15) and seven hundred forty-six grade three pupils (n = 746) as participants. Results revealed that the mathematics pupils when exposed to either English or Filipino language exhibited “good” performance on items in the remembering and understanding levels while “fair” performance was noted in items where applying skills were required. Whereas, pupils tend to perform better in Mathematics when Filipino is the medium of teaching and learning. Results provided evidence that the pupils’ first language positively affect their Mathematics achievement.