The steady decline in the rate of children born in Chiayi County may drastically increase the number of “miniature” elementary schools in the county before resulting in the institution being phased out altogether, forcing parents to send their children to Chiayi City to complete that part of their education, local officials say.
According to the Chiayi County County Government’s most recent census, 3,130 children were born in the region last year, less than half the number recorded a decade ago.
The county’s young child ratio was 11.97 at the end of last year, one of the lowest in the nation, the county said.
The local government cited changes to modern economic environments, late marriages and growing unwillingness to marry or to have children after marriage as the main reasons for the declining birthrate, which has fallen in all years except 2012.
That year bucked the trend because it was the Year of the Dragon on the Chinese zodiac and, according to traditional beliefs, this made it an auspicious year for children to be born in.
The county government said that the local birthrate last year was just 5.89, far lower than the 8.91 figure for the nation, adding that the county’s birthrate was the second-lowest in the nation at No. 19, higher only than Keelung’s.
If more younger couples choose not to have children, the low number of new elementary school students would cause the number of mini-elementary schools to double since there would not be enough children to fill normal-sized institutions, the county government said.
The county government defines mini-elementary schools as those with less than 50 students. The county currently has 30 such schools.
A total of 3,338 new students were enrolled in elementary schools county-wide, 2,000 less than the total number of students graduating from elementary school, the county said, adding that of the 124 such institutions in the county, nearly 50 percent — 59 — had single-digit enrolment figures this year.
Nearly 5,000 students are set to finish elementary school next year and the county estimates that only 3,000 new students are to enrol by next year. It has forecast that in five years, this trend could see mini-elementary schools face a wave of closures due to lack of students.
In comparison, Chiayi City registered 2,548 elementary-school students as of May 23 this year, only 752 less than the number of students graduating, the Chiayi City Government’s Bureau of Education said.
There was also an increase of 107 students from last year’s enrolment total, the bureau said.
According to Chiu Chiu-chan (邱秋嬋), director of the bureau’s division of education, the number of first-grade classes in the city has increased to 100, in part to accommodate the teacher-to-student ratio policy in place since 2011 and also to accommodate the Chiayi County students who come to study in Chiayi City.
Chiayi County Commissioner Helen Chang (張花冠) expressed concern at the accelerating decline of newborns in the country and called on the younger generation to try harder to have families.
Chang expressed hope that the development of the Dapumei Industrial Park (大埔美工業區) and the Ma Chou Hou Industrial Park (馬稠後工業區) would encourage more of the local younger generation to return to the area to work, as this would boost the county and city’s birthrates, effectively slowing the problems of aging populations.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching