New high school praised as model for Taipei's future

Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday attended the ground-breaking ceremony for the National Chengchi University Affiliated High School, the first-ever school construction project to be jointly funded by the city government and a national university.

The central government is also a major financial contributor to the project.

The school -- whose teaching staff will be supplied by National Chengchi University (NCCU), one of the top universities -- is widely expected to become a top high school in the city.

"Yesterday, Valentine's Day, was the marriage between two major political parties [the KMT-PFP coalition], and today, the Lunar Lantern Festival, is the marriage between the central and local governments which are jointly contributing to the birth of the affiliated high school of NCCU," Ma said at the ceremony.

Ma said that while it was the first case in which the Taipei City Government had cooperated with a national university in building a high school, it might also be the last high school the city government would build.

"Taipei will establish no more municipal high schools or universities. Currently each city district has at least two high schools, which is sufficient to meet the needs for secondary education," Ma said.

"Instead, the city government will work on narrowing the gap in the distribution of educational resources between the public and private high schools, and concentrating educational resources on primary and middle school education," Ma said.

Ma's remarks were tantamount to a public scotching of plans for a municipal Taipei University, first proposed by former mayor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

"We hope to focus on cultivating talents in the primary and middle schools in a bid to send them to the top-ranking universities, and ultimately boost the competitiveness of the students in Taipei," Ma said.

Funding for the NT$840 million NCCU-affiliated high school is coming from the city government (NT$280 million), the Ministry of Education (NT$360 million), and NCCU (NT$200 million).

The school, to be built on a 2-hectare site in the city's Mucha district, near the NCCU campus, is scheduled to be completed and to start enrolling students in 2005.

Educationalists said the establishment of the new school might cause a boom in household registration changes, in which parents switch their registrations to the district in which their desired school is located.

The NCCU-affiliated high school has plans to have 18 senior high school classes and 15 junior high school classes, recruiting between 2,000 and 3,000 students. Thirty five percent of the places will be reserved for children of NCCU staff, with the remaining 65 percent open to children from the neighboring communities.