Mandatory education standards are falling short of the global norm, as the government scrambles to overhaul primary education nationwide.
Nine years of mandatory education for all students, from age six to 15, once put Taiwan in an exclusive club of nations boasting high standards of primary education -- in 1968. Less than 10 countries required more than nine years of mandatory education then, according to UN statistics.
Fast forward to last year, when 46 of the 197 member states of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) -- many of them developed nations -- boasted 10 to 13 years of primary education, while Taiwan has maintained its nine-year standard.
"If we don't follow the example of countries requiring their students to have at least 10 to 13 years of schooling, our competitiveness as a nation will suffer," Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (
Citing a recent survey by the National Academy for Educational Research in which 78.4 percent of respondents supported extending mandatory education from nine to 12 years, Tu yesterday said the public supported 12-year mandatory education at the primary level, and that his ministry would submit legislation to the Legislative Yuan within the year calling for exactly that.
"Taiwan's level of development has changed in the past four decades, and a change in mandatory education standards are now necessary to reflect our current level of development," Tu said.
Huge increases in educational subsidies for both schools and financially disadvantaged students would also be included in the proposal, Tu said.
According to a ministry press release, starting in August, the ministry will dole out financial assistance to students whose families' yearly incomes total less than NT$300,000 (US$9,108), "so that those students' tuitions are on a par with what they would have to pay for public school education, no matter where they're enrolled."
In all, the ministry seeks to subsidize such students at the high school level to the tune of NT$1.22 billion (US$37 million) this year, with that amount increasing to NT$2.42 billion in 2008, the release said.
Additional subsidies totaling NT$380 million (US$11.54 million) will go to 71 senior high and vocational schools nationwide this year as well, if the ministry's plan is implemented, the release said.
The ministry seeks to increase that amount to NT$570 million for 131 such schools nationwide next year, the release added.
The boost in subsidies and the extension of mandatory education to 12 years are the result of four months of meetings between ministry and other Cabinet-level officials and education experts, Tu said.
Meanwhile, Premier Su Tseng-chang (
"Education is the foundation for our next generation," Su said.
The premier made his remarks while presenting the administration's report to the legislature for the first time during the first day of the session.
Before presenting the report, Su was approached by reporters and asked whether his administrative report had been influenced by his decision to run in the DPP's presidential primary.
Su said: "elections are only once but government policies shall remain constant."
The Cabinet's new policy will benefit at least 141,000 students, who will not have to take entrance exams for high school. The plan will cost the government NT$4.45 billion (US$135 million).
The premier said 23 new schools with more than 5,000 classrooms had been started up and more than 2,000 teachers had been hired during his six-year term as the Taipei County commissioner, creating NT$20 billion of debt for the county government.
"I still feel it is worth the money," Su said.
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:
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