The Ministry of Education plans to appoint 48 consultants who will be responsible for evaluating and improving mother-tongue language education standards in elementary and junior high schools.
Pan Wen-chung (
Ministry initiatives such as "Mother Language Promotion Day" and Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) performance activities have been a success, Pan said.
Shortage
However, there was a shortage of mother-tongue language professionals capable of evaluating language programs in schools, he said.
Therefore, the ministry had decided to identify elementary and junior high school teachers who specialize in mother-tongue language teaching and appoint them as language consultants, Pan said.
Pan said that between one and three consultants would be appointed in each city or county, depending on the number of schools in the area.
Counties or cities with fewer than 100 elementary and junior high schools would get one consultant, those with between 100 and 200 schools would have two, and those with more than 200 schools would get three.
The consultants would report back to their local education departments, Pan added.
The ministry would provide schools with the necessary funds to hire substitute teachers to replace teachers chosen as mother-tongue language consultants, Pan said.
"We hope that these professionals will be able to help evaluate the education ministry's policies and promote mother-tongue language education," he said.
The plan will be implemented at the start of the autumn semester this year.
Criticism
In related news, Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) attended a conference held by the Taiwan Association of University Professors on Saturday where professors said that the ministry's policies for mother-tongue education were badly implemented and showed a lack of proper planning, according to a Central News Agency report.
Tu responded that the ministry hoped the appointment of mother-tongue language consultants would help it to better understand the actual situation so that it could take steps to improve standards.
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