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Number of students with a foreign mom or dad reaches high

A record-high number of children with a foreign parent were enrolled in elementary and junior high schools last year, the Ministry of Education said on Friday.

Around 103,000 children with a foreign parent were enrolled, the ministry said on its Web site, adding that the number of "new immigrant children" had passed the 100,000 mark for the first time.

The number of children with a foreign parent grew 29.2 percent over the previous year, it said.

Last year, more than 90,000 students born to foreign spouses were enrolled in elementary schools, representing a 28.5 percent rise over the previous year.

More than 10,000 were enrolled in junior high schools, a 35 percent jump over the previous year, ministry statistics showed.

The ministry said there were, on average, 37 "new immigrant children" at each primary school last year -- eight more than in 2006 -- and an average of 15 at every junior high school, up from 14 the previous year.

Chung-Ho Elementary School in Taipei County had the most students with a foreign parent of any elementary school last year, with 267. Lungkang Junior High School in Taoyuan County led junior highs with 130 students with a foreign parent.

More than 30 percent of children born to a foreign father or mother attended smaller schools with fewer than 2,000 students, ministry figures showed.

The main countries of origin of the foreign parents of the children were China, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.

A ministry official said that between 1998 and 2002, the number of babies born to a foreign father or mother grew every year, from 13,904 in 1998 to 30,833 in 2002.

That trend has since been reversed, as fewer Taiwanese married foreign spouses in the following years, with 23,903 babies born to couples of mixed-nationality in 2006.

That figure accounted for about 20 percent of all births in Taiwan for the year.
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