Foreigners planning to work for cram schools as language teachers are to be required to provide documents issued by their home countries guaranteeing good conduct, the Ministry of Education said yesterday.
Department of Lifelong Education Director Huang Yueh-li (黃月麗) said the ministry has submitted a proposed amendment to the Supplementary Education Act (補習及進修教育法) to the legislature for review.
The Education and Culture Committee yesterday approved the draft amendment to Article 9 of the act that would tighten regulations on cram-school teachers to ensure the safety of students.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
If passed, the amendment would require first-time applicants for teaching jobs at private institutions to provide documents proving that they had demonstrated good conduct prior to entering the nation.
While the information in the documents may vary from one nation to another, it should be able to prove that applicants have not committed any crimes within a certain period before they are allowed to enter the nation and begin the interview process, Huang said.
Cram schools are to be required to submit the documents to the Ministry of Labor for review, she said, adding that rules governing foreign teachers’ entry and employment would have to be amended.
Taiwan would not the first nation to require expatriates to provide records documenting good behavior when they apply for teaching posts, as other Asian nations, such as Japan and South Korea, have adopted similar policies, she said.
The rule change would not affect foreigners who are already working as teachers at private institutes, who are required to provide Police Criminal Record Certificates issued by the Ministry of the Interior showing that they have not committed any criminal offenses in Taiwan in the three months prior to their employment, she said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko Chih-en (柯志恩), who is the convener of the committee, said that foreigners in other lines of work who want to pursue a teaching career would also need to request documents guaranteeing good conduct from the authorities in their home nation.
Ko said she hoped the draft would pass the second and third readings this legislative session.
The draft amendment also includes a penalty of NT$50,000 for institutes that fail to report cases of sexual harassment or assault perpetrated by their employees.
The ministry proposed the amendment amid widespread controversy over the suicide of author Lin Yi-han (林奕含) last month, allegedly due to the trauma she sustained after being raped by a cram-school teacher when she was 17.
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
RSS