Premier Yu Shyi-kun yesterday pledged to allocate NT$5 billion a year for the next five years to improve the quality of higher education, as well as the education of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The money will come from the Cabinet's proposed NT$500 billion budget for the expansion of public infrastructure projects.
"Education is a part of national infrastructure," Yu said.
Yu made the announcement during the closing ceremony of a two-day education-reform forum, which was attended by experts and academics.
The forum, organized by the National Conference on Educational Development, reached consensus on three pivotal topics concerning educational policies yesterday.
Yu promised that the government will provide sufficient resources to assist the Ministry of Education (MOE) to implement feasible and well-organized educational construction.
"This is a brand-new milestone for educational reform," Yu said.
"The wisdom that has been gathered at the conference will be valued. The government will create a five-year plan to solve any problems caused by the educational reform and carry out new educational reforms based on those ideas."
The conference's preliminary consensus about the educational rights of minority groups was that there is a need to reduce the imbalance in educational resources of city and country schools. The conference also identified the need to assure equal educational opportunities for minority groups such as less fortunate families, the disabled and Aborigines, as well as families with only one child or a parent from a different culture, especially those from China and Southeast-Asian countries.
The premier expressed concern over the educational rights of children with foreign parents.
There are close to 300,000 foreign spouses in Taiwan, Yu said, and if every foreign mother has two children, then it means that about 600,000 children are reared by mothers who might have difficulty adjusting to the Taiwanese culture and language.
"Considering the principles of human rights and justice, we cannot neglect this group's interests," Yu said. "Those foreign spouses are Taiwan's daughters-in-law."
Another topic that prompted heated debate was the feasibility of extending the current nine years of compulsory education to 12 years. Although some people who attended the conference objected to the idea of 12 years of compulsory education, most expressed their support. They emphasized that the program needs to be planned deliberately and thoroughly before being implemented, according to the report issued by the MOE after the conference.
The Minister of Education, Huang Jong-tsun (黃榮村), said in the closing speech that the conference reached initial consensus on 36 subjects relevant to the program and found that the major controversies centered around when and how to implement the new system.
"The ministry will insist on maintaining the high quality of education when implementing the program," Huang said.
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