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Premier calls for immediate plan to improve education

“The premier emphasized that human resources are the nation’s only competitive resource.”

— Vanessa Shih, Cabinet spokeswoman

Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) yesterday instructed the Ministry of Education (MOE) to propose a plan within a month to improve high school education after the results of this year’s college admissions showed students with negligible scores on the entrance exams were accepted.

Cabinet Spokeswoman Vanessa Shih (史亞平) said the premier was dismayed to see the lowest college entrance score among those accepted to university was 7.69 points. The maximum score for students applying to major in the humanities was 500 and in the sciences it was 600.

“What we are concerned about was not the score itself but why our high school graduates would score only this high,” Shih told a press conference after the Cabinet’s weekly meeting yesterday.

“This highlights a problem with quality management in higher, secondary and vocational education,” she said. “The premier believes schools should have a mechanism to manage the quality [of their graduates].”

This year’s college admissions were finalized last Friday, with the acceptance rate hitting a new high of 97.1 percent. The lowest entrance score of someone admitted to university was 7.69 points, at Leader University’s department of health and environment in Tainan.

“The premier emphasized that human resources are the nation’s only competitive resource. Poor management of the quality of our human resources could seriously damage our national competitiveness,” she said.

Meanwhile, the ministry is mulling whether to allow high schools to hold back students with unsatisfactory grades in key subjects.

High school students are required to repeat a grade if they fail more than 50 percent of the credits they take during one school year. If they fail key subjects such as math or English but meet the overall requirements they are not held back. Any student who completes 160 credits over the course of high school is allowed to graduate regardless of their performance in specific subjects.

“There are indeed some blind spots” in the rules, Department of Secondary Education Director Su Teh-hsiang (蘇德祥) said.

“Some students can still graduate and take part in the college entrance exams after completing their credits even though they perform poorly on academic subjects. We may need to adjust part of the regulations,” Su said.
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