Solon wants to improve education quality for more women leaders

ACT-CIS Party-list Representative Jocelyn Tulfo made this statement after newly-crowned Miss Universe 2019, South Africa’s Zozibini Tunzi stressed the importance of teaching leadership to young girls. (File photo: Jocelyn Tulfo/Facebook)

MANILA — A party-list lawmaker on Monday pushed to improve the quality of education in public schools in order to create more women leaders.

ACT-CIS Party-list Representative Jocelyn Tulfo made this statement after newly-crowned Miss Universe 2019, South Africa’s Zozibini Tunzi stressed the importance of teaching leadership to young girls.

“I think one of the most important things we should be teaching young girls today is leadership. It’s something that has been lacking in young girls and women for a very long time, not because we don’t want to, but because of what society has labeled women to be,” Tunzi said.

I think we are the most powerful beings in the world, and that we should be given every opportunity. And that is what we should be teaching these young girls – to take up space. Nothing as important as taking up space in society,” Tunzi added.

Tulfo said the Department of Education should take a firm stand on not allowing non-readers to move on to high school with Grade 7 as an entry point.

Tulfo suggested that there must be a special Alternative Learning System (ALS) intervention curriculum run by the DepEd’s Education for Learners with Special Needs Office (ELSNO) for pupils with significant reading comprehension difficulties after Grade 3.

“We will have many more women leaders when we improve education quality in our public schools, particularly by addressing reading comprehension, wherein we scored the lowest in the latest global survey of students’ abilities,” Tulfo said.

“Reading Comprehension is a particularly difficult challenge because of the intense poverty most public school elementary and high school students face every day. Most elementary school graduates are non-readers. However long it takes for them to reach the reading standard of Grade 6 level, they stay in the ALS until they graduate,” she added.

Tulfo said for current students in Grades 4, 5 and 6, the same ALS curriculum for non-readers should be able to absorb those students and prevent the non-reading problem from spreading to high school.

“To implement this, DepEd must hire more teachers with special training on students with reading challenges. I believe there is no better way to go about this massive reading problem in our public elementary schools,” she said.