Foreign English teachers to be hired at elementary and junior high schools are intended to back up their domestic counterparts rather than replace them, Minister of Education Huang Jong-tsun (黃榮村) said yesterday.
Huang made the remark in the legislature as lawmakers from across party lines questioned the wisdom of the proposed policy.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
Earlier, the Ministry of Education revealed its plan to recruit 1,000 foreign English teachers, prompted by the extension of English education to elementary schools, beginning in September.
To that end, it proposed offering those teachers salaries of between NT$60,000 and NT$90,000 per month.
"Foreign English teachers will not take away job opportunities from their domestic counterparts as the former will play an auxiliary role," Huang told a meeting of the legislature's Education and Culture Committee.
He added the pay schedules for foreign English teachers are still under review.
Earlier in the day, lawmakers from across party lines voiced concerns the policy would displace English teachers from Taiwan, who earn about half as much as their foreign counterparts.
TSU Legislator Chen Cheng-lung (程振隆) criticized the plan as loosely formulated, saying not all native-English speakers are equally qualified.
He suggested limiting the recruitment to only those with credentials and work experience in teaching English.
PFP Legislator Sheu Yuan-kuo (
Associate professors in Taiwan can make about NT$72,000 a month while assistant professors make about NT$65,000, he noted.
"I suggest the government reserve the teaching berths for domestic English teachers," Sheu said. "Native English-speakers with strange accents will not be more competent in any way."
Huang said the proposed pay schedule is based on the salaries of English teachers at a bilingual high school in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park.
He reiterated that foreign teachers will play a supportive role in the ministry's plan to upgrade students' English proficiency.
Most of the foreign teachers will be sent to elementary and junior high schools in small cities and remote areas where English teachers are in short supply, the minister added.
"That being the case, they will not replace or squeeze out local English teachers," he said.
Foreigners are currently banned from teaching any subject in the nation's elementary and junior high schools.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching