The Navotas City’s Project Management Team set out its priorities for its education program in a workshop held last December 1, 2011. The PMT, led by Mayor John Reynald Tiangco, has put top priority on activities that support parents’ engagement, enhancing teacher skills and values, and principal empowerment. These priorities were set in response to the challenge of improving performance of schoolchildren in Navotas. A look at its National Achievement Test results in SY 2009-2010 showed that the average Grade Six pupil had a Mean Percentage Score of 62%.
Navotas Mayor John Reynald Tiangco with members of the City’s newly-created PMT.
During the workshop facilitated by Synergeia, PMT members said that they need to strengthen involvement of parents, deepen values and skills of teachers, school management of principals, and stakeholder support. As its first activity, the PMT agreed to organize a Parent-Children Fun Day in each of the City’s 15 elementary schools. The objective is to enjoin the parents to actively participate in school programs.
In its second PMT meeting on January 5, 2012, Engr. Arnel Lupisan, President of the Federation of PTAs, presented “Funtastic Day” a day of fellowship for parents, teachers and students. The day is intended to strengthen ties between parents and teachers. There will be group games, contests, community singing, and a discussion on responsible parenting.
The second program of the PMT is an assessment of teachers’ training needs. Aside from the use of a survey, the familiarity of teachers with problem solving, use of numbers, grammar, and comprehension will be assessed using simple tests. Mayor Tiangco emphasized the need for assessing the impact of the values-training formation that the city conducted as well as an assessment of the needs of principals in management.
