Sun, Nov 16, 2008 page2

• INTERVIEW: Referendum on class size was hasty: Tsai Ching-hwa

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  Kaohsiung City Education Bureau Director-General Tsai Ching-hwa sat down with ‘Taipei Times’ staff reporter Flora Wang in a joint media interview on Friday to discuss the city government’s stance on the class size referendum, which was held yesterday

  Taipei Times: How do you think the results of the referendum will turn out?

  Tsai Ching-hwa (蔡清華): The public appears to be quite indifferent [about the referendum].

  As a long-time educator, I certainly believe that the fewer students there are in a class, the more likely teachers can achieve a better teaching method. But the problem is just how small the class size should be.

  Education involves not only passing on knowledge to students but also helping students learn how to appreciate art and get along with their peers. In that regard, they need to have companions. Sometimes they also need to be engaged in teamwork.

  Another problem is related to the budget issue. Teachers’ salaries account for 86 percent of the city government’s education expenditure. In accordance with the teachers’ association proposal, the number of students in all primary and junior high school classes would be reduced to 25 pupils per class in two years ... But the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) policy is to gradually reduce the student number [from around 33 students] by one pupil every year until the student number per class reaches 29. We prefer the MOE’s policy.

  If we adopt the association’s proposal, every school may need to increase its number of classrooms by 30 to 40.

  However, we do not have any property downtown where we can build extra school buildings to accommodate the additional classrooms. We can only build new schools in Xiaogang (小港) and Nanzih (楠梓) [in suburban Kaohsiung]. Plus, the MOE has made it clear that the city would have to raise the funds [for classrooms] by itself to cover the cost of the association’s plan should the referendum pass. If that’s the case, we would have to cut the budget reserved for social welfare and other government affairs.

  We figure that the number of [new] students will begin to decrease in the 2013 school year. If we build a lot of extra school buildings in response to the referendum now, those buildings will be deserted while the additional teachers that schools would have recruited in response to the referendum will become redundant manpower.

  TT: So the major problem with the referendum lies in the timetable proposed by the association? You don’t think it is feasible [to downsize every class to 25 students] in two years?

  Tsai: It will be too hasty.

  TT: The Kaohsiung Teachers’ Association (KTA) has complained that the city government failed to carry out its duty to promote the referendum. What has the bureau done to promote the vote?

  Tsai: Two weeks ago, we entrusted a poll company to conduct a telephone survey [on residents of the city] and about 65 percent of the interviewees said they knew about the referendum.

  I previously communicated with the association hoping to cooperate with them in holding conferences around the city to promote the referendum because it was a good opportunity to teach the public about democracy.

  But they later chose to hold rallies by themselves instead of working with us. We then had the Kaohsiung Open University hold public hearings and six debates for us starting from last Sunday [Nov. 9].

  We also allowed the association to display banners at the entrances to the city’s schools to promote the bid, as well as letting them distribute flyers and stickers.
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