Education spending reforms urged

Legislators yesterday asked the Ministry of Education to have the local governments' financial responsibilities for education established by law as it works to restore a legal stipulation for education funding.

The government's policy on education funding has been a concern among educators since a constitutional stipulation was removed in 1997.

The Constitution used to require the central government to earmark at least 15 percent of its annual budget for education, scientific research and cultural affairs.

On Wednesday, Minister of Education Kirby Yung (楊朝2?/CHINESE>) announced that his ministry had come up with a bill specifying that the nation's total education funding must constitute at least 7 percent of the gross national product (GNP).

During the current fiscal year, the total education funding has accounted for 6.75 percent of the GNP, official statistics show.

According to the bill, a committee would be set up to compute the basic demand for education funding of each locality, and a ratio would be set to determine a local government's share based on their financial condition.

While expressing their support for the bill yesterday, legislators argued that the responsibilities of local governments must be more clearly defined to ensure the effectiveness of such a law.

KMT legislator Diane Lee (李慶|w) proposed that local governments should be required to earmark at least 30 percent of their financial resources for education.

"We've discovered that local governments tend to shrink their education spending whenever they need to adjust their budgets," Lee said.

She said local governments should also be required to set up an education development fund to subsidize their education funding.

"All the education funding and education subsidies from the central government will go to the fund. The money cannot be mixed up with other budgets of the local governments," Lee said.

Though the jurisdiction over compulsory elementary and junior high education is in the hands of local governments, most localities have been relying on the central government and the Taiwan Provincial Government for funding. As the subsidies from the provincial government were cut as a result of its downsizing in July of this year, some localities opted to suspend education items that used to be funded by the provincial government.

Chu Li-lun (|階??/CHINESE>), another KMT legislator, said the problem concerning education funding will never be resolved unless local governments do their part.

"We must specify the share of responsibility between the central and local governments. Otherwise the problem will be there forever," Chu said.

Minister Yung agreed: "If the central government is asked to pay the money alone, it is impossible to see any major increase in the total education funding considering the financial conditions of the central government."