Implementing mother-tongue based education in a multilingual context like the Philippines requires a full appreciation of the diversity of languages spoken across communities and schools and among students and their teachers. DepEd’s Learner Information System which assigns a language to students when they are registered fails to capture a true picture of the languages students speak, primarily because it relies on the teacher to select the language assigned to each student. For example, in Region V, most teachers simply assign “Bikol” to their students. The USAID-funded ABC+ project deployed a computerized language identification tool in region V and VI to more accurately assess students and teachers individually and thus identify the primary and secondary languages that they speak.

Wanting to support effective learning in the early grades of school in a linguistically diverse country such as the Philippines it is important answer some basic questions, such as: • What languages do children come to school speaking? • Do children have more than one language that they can use when they start school? • What languages do teachers speak? • And how well do students’ and teachers’ languages match? Data from different sources is used to answers these questions.

Learning Community Innovations, an Emerging Good Practice Digest. March 2021 Digest No. 1. Includes parent engagement successes.