TL;DR: Yes — degree programmes in the Philippines are overwhelmingly taught in English, and that is genuine rather than marketing. But two things people repeat about the Philippine system are now wrong. First, the mother tongue is no longer the required medium of instruction in Kindergarten to Grade 3: Republic Act No. 12027 discontinued that, the medium reverted to Filipino and English, and DepEd disseminated the implementing rules on 1 August 2025. Second, English is the classroom language, not the campus language. The Constitution makes Filipino and English official languages of instruction and regional languages the auxiliary official languages in their regions, and that is exactly what a corridor sounds like: Filipino in Manila, Cebuano in Cebu, and code-switching in both.
What the law actually says
Everything about language in Philippine education runs back to two short paragraphs in the 1987 Constitution, Article XIV.
Section 6: "The national language of the Philippines is Filipino." It adds that "the Government shall take steps to initiate and sustain the use of Filipino as a medium of official communication and as language of instruction in the educational system."
Section 7: "For purposes of communication and instruction, the official languages of the Philippines are Filipino and, until otherwise provided by law, English." And: "The regional languages are the auxiliary official languages in the regions and shall serve as auxiliary media of instruction therein."
Read that carefully, because it settles more than it looks like it does. English is not a foreign language of convenience bolted onto the system. It is a constitutionally named official language of instruction. Filipino is too, and the Constitution actively directs the government to push it. Both statements are true simultaneously, and the friction between them is most of what follows.
The K-3 rule, and how it changed
This is the part where most guides to the Philippine system, including ones still online, are out of date.
2013 — RA 10533, the Enhanced Basic Education Act, approved 15 May 2013, said: "For kindergarten and the first three (3) years of elementary education, instruction, teaching materials and assessment shall be in the regional or native language of the learners." Section 5(f) tied the curriculum to "the principles and framework of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE)." The Act also provided that Filipino and English "shall be gradually introduced as languages of instruction until such time when these two (2) languages can become the primary languages of instruction at the secondary level."
2024 — RA 12027 amended Sections 4 and 5 of RA 10533 and discontinued that requirement. Under the new text, the medium of instruction "shall revert to Filipino and, until otherwise provided by law, English, pursuant to Article XIV, Section 7 of the 1987 Constitution," with the regional languages serving as auxiliary media. The Act lapsed into law without the President's signature: the text published on LawPhil records 10 October 2024, while some news reports gave 12 October. Sources differ on the day; nobody disputes the month or the substance.
MTB-MLE is not abolished, it is optional. RA 12027 provides that the MTB-MLE principles and framework under Section 5(f) of RA 10533 "may be applied in monolingual classes," subject to conditions: the mother tongue must have an official orthography and documented vocabulary published by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, published literature such as big books and picture stories, and appropriately trained teachers. The Act also requires DepEd to review the optional implementation three years after effectivity and every three years after that, reporting to the President, the Senate and the House by 30 June following the review year.
2025 — the implementing rules. DepEd disseminated the IRR of RA 12027 through DepEd Memorandum No. 059, s. 2025, dated 1 August 2025.
| Period | What K-3 instruction was |
|---|---|
| 2013–2024 | Mother tongue / regional language required, under RA 10533 |
| From October 2024 | Filipino and English, per RA 12027; mother tongue optional in monolingual classes |
| From August 2025 | Same, with DepEd's implementing rules disseminated (DM 059, s. 2025) |
If you are moving a young child into a Philippine school, this matters directly, and it interacts with everything else in the Philippine education system guide. If you are an adult coming for a degree, it matters mainly because it tells you which articles about the country are stale.
Degree programmes: English, with two caveats
At tertiary level the practical answer is straightforward. Most degree programmes are delivered in English: lectures, slides, textbooks, exams, thesis. That is the reason Philippine universities can recruit internationally, and the reason a Philippine transcript reads to a foreign regulator as an English-medium qualification.
Two caveats.
First, it is not a single national mandate. The constitutional position is that Filipino and English are both official languages for instruction. Institutions and departments choose. Filipino language and literature subjects are taught in Filipino by design, not by accident, and some general-education courses are offered in Filipino. That is normal and it is not a bait-and-switch.
Second, "English-medium" describes the materials more reliably than the delivery. A lecturer whose slides, readings and exam are entirely in English may still explain a difficult concept in Filipino to a room where almost everyone speaks it, then return to English. For a foreign student this is rarely fatal — the assessable material is in English — but it is disorienting in week one if nobody warned you.
Before enrolling, ask the department three specific questions in writing: what language the lectures are delivered in, what language the exams are set in, and whether any required course in the programme is taught in Filipino. A department that answers precisely is telling you something useful about the department as well as about the language.
English admission requirements vary by school and nationality rather than following one national rule; English test requirements for foreign applicants covers what different institutions ask for.
The corridor problem
Here is what the marketing does not say. Your classes are in English. Almost nothing else is.
Group chats, jokes, lunch, the conversation that continues after the professor leaves, the tricycle driver, the market vendor, the barangay office, the hospital reception desk — these run in Filipino in Metro Manila, Baguio and most of Luzon, and in Cebuano across much of the Visayas and Mindanao, including Cebu and Davao. The Constitution's own framing is the honest description: the regional languages are "the auxiliary official languages in the regions."
Nobody publishes a statistic on what language students speak between classes, so treat the paragraph above as an expectation to plan around rather than a measured fact. But it is the single most common gap between what international students are told and what they find, and it produces a specific failure mode: a student who is academically fine and socially isolated for a semester.
The countermeasures are small and boring.
- Learn the right language, not the prestigious one. Filipino will not help you much in Cebu City. Cebuano will not help you much in Manila. Find out which city first.
- Learn fifty words before you arrive. Greetings, numbers, directions, food, please and thank you. The social return on fifty words is disproportionate.
- Say early that you do not follow. Filipino classmates switch to English readily when asked; most will not notice they have switched away unless told.
- Do not treat code-switching as rudeness. It is the default register, not a decision to exclude you.
If your reason for coming is the language itself rather than a degree, the economics are different and better — see learning English in the Philippines.
If you are bringing a young child
The K-3 change lands hardest on families with children entering Kindergarten to Grade 3, and it cuts both ways.
The upside. An English-speaking five-year-old entering a Philippine school in 2026 is walking into a classroom whose statutory medium is Filipino and English, not the local vernacular. Before RA 12027 that same child would have met a legally mandated mother-tongue classroom in Cebuano, Ilocano, Waray or whichever language the region used. That obstacle is gone as a requirement.
The complication. It is gone as a requirement, not as a practice. RA 12027 permits MTB-MLE to continue optionally in monolingual classes, and the conditions it sets — an official Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino orthography, documented vocabulary, published literature, trained teachers — are conditions a well-established regional language such as Cebuano can plausibly meet. So a school in Cebu may still be running mother-tongue instruction in the early grades entirely lawfully. Nothing in the law tells you which schools have opted in, and DepEd's own reporting cycle on the optional programme runs on a three-year review with a report due to the President and Congress by 30 June following the review year.
The practical question to put to a primary school, then, is not "has the mother tongue policy changed" — it has — but "does this school run optional MTB-MLE in Kindergarten to Grade 3, and in which language?" Ask it of the principal, in writing, and ask what happens to a child who does not speak that language. A school that has thought about the answer is a school that has thought about your child.
The second question worth asking is how much Filipino your child will meet as a subject rather than as a medium. Medium of instruction and subject list are two different things, and RA 12027 changed only the first. Ask the school for the actual weekly timetable rather than inferring it from a policy summary.
How good is English in the Philippines, actually?
The number most often quoted is EF's English Proficiency Index. EF's own page for the Philippines shows a global ranking of 28 with a score of 569, marked as one point down on the previous score. The page does not state its edition year on the face of it, and its downloadable fact sheet is labelled 2025.
Treat that for what it is: a commercial index built on people who chose to take EF's online test, not a national survey. It is a reasonable signal that English is widely and functionally used, and it is not evidence about any particular campus or lecturer.
The more useful signal is the one you can gather yourself. Email the department. Read the reply. If the reply is fluent, precise English written by a member of staff rather than an agent, that tells you more about your next four years than any index.
What to check before you enrol
- The language of instruction for your exact programme, in writing, from the department.
- Whether any required subject is delivered in Filipino — usually a general-education or literature requirement.
- The English test the school requires, if any, and whether your nationality is exempt.
- Which regional language your campus city uses, so you learn the useful one.
- What language student services operate in — the registrar, the clinic, the housing office. This is where an English-medium university most often stops being English-medium.
The wider country-level question of whether the Philippines is the right choice, of which language is only one part, is worked through in is the Philippines good for international students. And if you are bringing school-age children, the calendar you are stepping into is set out in the Philippine school calendar for foreign families.
Sources
- Official Gazette — The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, Article XIV, Sections 6 and 7
- Republic Act No. 10533 — Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, approved 15 May 2013 (full text)
- Republic Act No. 12027 — discontinuing the use of the mother tongue as medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3 (full text)
- DepEd — DM 059, s. 2025, Dissemination of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of RA 12027, 1 August 2025
- EF English Proficiency Index — Philippines
