The Ministry of Education (MOE) will take over the management of preschool childcare starting next year, the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) announced yesterday, as the government moved to integrate preschool education and the childcare system.
“At the moment, the childcare system falls under the jurisdiction of the MOI, while the preschool education system, such as kindergartens, falls under the jurisdiction of the MOE, but the age group, the functions and the target groups that they serve mostly overlap,” Chang Hsiu-yuan (張秀鴛), director-general of the MOI’s Child Welfare Bureau, said in a press statement.
To avoid confusion over the division of administrative responsibilities, Chang said that “starting on Jan. 1 next year, all businesses related to childcare and education for children ages two to six will be under the jurisdiction of the MOE,” while the bureau will continue to take charge of care centers for children under the age of two.
As the MOE will be fully in charge of preschool childcare and education, it will be easier to map out a curriculum for children from ages two to six, she said.
Chang added that the changes would be done in accordance with the Child Education and Care Act (幼兒教育及照顧法) that the Legislative Yuan passed earlier this month, after 14 years of discussions within the government.
The management of a total of 4,649 childcare facilities — including 3,825 daycare centers and 824 after-school care centers — currently under the administration of the bureau, will be transferred to the MOE, Chang said.
She said the bureau would start preparing for the management transfer immediately to minimize problems and confusion when the transfer officially takes effect.
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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