Children who have high IQs or display exceptional talent in artistic, creative or physical areas, may be allowed to enter elementary school at the age of five rather than six, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said over the weekend.
At present, elementary schools in some of the nation’s cities and counties accept gifted children at the age of five, while those in other cities and counties do not, insisting that children must reach the age of six before they can be admitted, officials from the ministry’s Special Education Unit said.
The ministry has therefore decided to integrate two existing educational laws — an act governing school entry and study periods for gifted students and an act governing special education — and allow gifted students to legally enroll in elementary school at a younger age, the officials said.
ENROLMENT PROCESS
Parents of gifted children can contact the special education committee in their respective cities and counties to obtain applications for early enrolment, the officials said.
The integrated act, which is expected to be amended by next month or April, will retain a stipulation that gifted students are only allowed to skip grades once in elementary school and once in junior high school, the officials said.
ASSIMILATION PROBLEMS
The ministry maintains a limit on the number of times gifted students can jump grades over concerns that if they move up too fast in school they may have difficulty assimilating into their classes.
The revised act will also allow physically challenged students to attend school for an additional two years, the officials 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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