The Cabinet's 12-year compulsory education plan continued to draw fire and threatened to impact on the real estate sector yesterday as an embattled education ministry official fought back tears while defending the plan in a legislative hearing packed with skeptical parents, principals and lawmakers.
"I'm the son of a poor farmer, and I have kids, too. Don't you think we're [Ministry of Education officials] working overtime every night to 11pm on this plan?" said Chen Yi-hsing (
Raising the number of years of compulsory education from nine to 12 by 2009, the plan has stirred up a media frenzy since Premier Su Tseng-chang (
Critics yesterday said they support the plan in principle, but are concerned about how the ministry would draw up new school districts and phase out the Basic Competence Test -- crucial details in the plan.
Middle school graduates' test performance determines which high schools they can attend.
"Look, everybody is for this plan. That's not the issue," said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (
"The issue is there seems to be a lack of preparation -- vital details about how this plan would work are missing," she added.
A series of apparent missteps in the ministry's unveiling of the plan ignited fierce debate among education experts and parents last week.
Education officials originally said they would minimize the importance of middle school students' test performances in 36 "elite" schools nationwide before the end of 2009, using their scores as merely a "cut-off" criterion rather than the final determinant in the high school admission process.
But that announcement forced education officials to back-pedal the next day and admit that "elite" wasn't even going to be a category for high schools, torpedoing their plan to de-emphasize the significance of test scores in prestigious schools before ultimately scrapping the test in all schools.
On Sunday, Minister Tu -- in an apparent effort at damage control -- only poured gas on the fire by saying: "Everything that we've said about elite and non-elite schools no longer applies. Discussions on how to phase out the Basic Competence Test will continue until 2009."
"If not even Minister Tu's comments apply, whose comments do?" said Chien Mei-hsia (簡美霞), general secretary of the Taipei Alliance for Parents of High School Students.
The ministry must stop flip-flopping on the plan's details, she added.
Parents yesterday warned of repercussions in the real estate sector, with people rushing to buy homes near prestigious high schools for fear their residency status outside school districts boasting top schools would prevent their children from attending such institutions.
If the ministry were to confer official "elite" titles on some schools while drawing up school districts beyond which schools couldn't easily recruit students, that could shut out scores of middle school graduates eager to enter quality high schools, they said.
"You could see an exodus of parents from school districts without famous schools to districts boasting schools like Taipei First Girls School or Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School," warned Chiu Han-chiang (邱漢強), chairman of the Taipei County Teachers' Association, referring to two of the nation's most prestigious high schools.
Real estate prices near Taipei First Girls School would continue to rise if school districts are drawn up per the plan, said Eastern Realty agent Chiu Ching-an (邱情安) by phone yesterday.
"I estimate that apartment prices there will rise by NT$30,000 [US$912] to NT$60,000 per ping [3.3m2] once the plan goes through," Chiu said. "Right now, demand is already way beyond supply."
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,