Foreigners could play a bigger role in the nation's education system, as legislators proposed an amendment yesterday that would allow foreigners to serve as private high school principals and university presidents.
The Legislative Yuan's Education and Culture Committee (教育及文化委員會) yesterday proposed an amendment to Article 78 of the Private School Law (私立學校法), which stipulates that only Taiwanese citizens can serve as the heads of private high schools or universities funded by foreigners.
The amendment bill has been stalled in the Legislative Yuan for nearly two years. In January 2003 the Ministry of Education sent the bill for review in the Legislative Yuan.
The original purpose, education officials said, was to relax restrictions on foreign teachers' participation in the nation's education system after Taiwan entered the WTO in 2001.
Yet education officials yesterday expressed reservations about the impact once the bill is ratified.
"We totally agree with the principle behind the amendment. But the bill must wait until after we assess its influence on domestic education services," an official said during the committee meeting yesterday.
Only three legislators attended the committee meeting yesterday -- Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chang Hua-kuan (張花冠), People First Party Legislator Lee Yung-ping (李永萍) and Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Cheng Cheng-lung (程振隆).
The bill was put off again since convening a committee meeting requires the attendance of at least seven legislators.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods