Thousands of preschool caretakers yesterday demonstrated outside the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taipei to protest a law that excludes them from being qualified teachers for kindergarten and daycare center students aged five or above.
The demonstration was staged to coincide with Teacher’s Day, which falls on Sept. 28.
The demonstrators berated the ministry for the kindergarten and daycare center integration it carried out in accordance with the Early Childhood Education and Care Act (幼兒教育及照顧法) — which took effect on Jan. 1, 2012 — saying the move deprived them of their right to work, as caretakers with a diploma in preschool education will be banned from teaching five and six-year-olds starting in 2017.
The promulgation of the act also shifted authority over daycare centers from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Education, which in the past only governed schools starting with kindergartens..
Although Article 18 of the act stipulates that at least one teacher be assigned to classes for children aged five to six, only when the class size exceeds 15 students are caretakers allowed to be coteachers.
Early Childhood Education Federation president Chen Chi-gang (甄啟剛), who is a caretaker, bashed the act, saying that caretakers are professionally trained educators who spent seven years — three in vocational high schools and four in college — studying early childhood education and are required to obtain a total of 128 credits before they are certified to teach preschool children.
In contrast, kindergarten teachers only need 26 credits to pass the teacher education program, even if their majors are irrelevant to preschool education, he said.
“Caretakers are legal kindergarten and daycare center teachers. Out right to work is protected by the Constitution. For so many years we have taught five and six-year-olds without any hassle. Yet now, we will only be allowed to teach children under five years old,” he said. “To make matters worse, the education ministry now issues a NT$2,000 monthly subsidy to kindergarten teachers, while caretakers only get NT$900. We share the same workload, but are paid less. It is unfair.”
At the protest, deputy director of the education ministry’s K-12 Education Administration Huang Tzu-teng (黃子騰) said the kindergarten-daycare integration was carried out in light of the low qualification rates of kindergarten teachers, who must obtain a special license and balance the caretaker-to-teacher ratio.
He said the education ministry would propose an amendment to the act that would extend the 2017 deadline to 2020. Under the proposal, from 2020, caretakers would have to obtain an additional 16 credits through classes and internship programs if they wish to teach five and six-year-olds, he said.
His remarks sparked fury among the demonstrators, who responded by demanding that the education ministry reinstate their right to teach. They then gave Huang an appeal urging the ministry to propose a reasonable amendment within one month or they would surround the ministry building in protest.
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