Fierce competition and weak regulation have made deceptive marketing and legally dubious practices widespread among private kindergartens, teachers’ union members said yesterday.
“Private kindergartens exist to make money, which gives rise to a wide variety of sales pitches and other gimmicks,” National Federation of Teachers’ Unions early childhood education committee member Lai Min-li (賴閔莉) said, citing deceptive statements about the quality of teachers.
“Many kindergartens emphasize that their teachers are young when in reality low pay forces them to hire inexperienced teachers and they also suffer from a high turnover rate,” Lai said. “While they say that all of their teachers are ‘qualified instructors,’ a significant percentage could be ‘instructional caretakers’ or even ‘assistant instructional caretakers’ rather than formal teachers.”
Instructional caretakers are subject to looser educational and licensing requirements when compared with formal teachers, with regulations limiting assistant instructional caretakers to a third of kindergartens’ instructors, she said, adding that it was difficult to enforce the rules requiring schools to prominently display their instructors’ qualifications.
“The qualifications can be up the day kindergartens are evaluated by inspectors, but then taken down the next. Because evaluations take place every five years, it is possible that the kindergartens have not updated the instructors’ qualifications to reflect their new teachers, so it is important for parents to examine and make comparisons,” she said, adding that setting standards for fees and ensuring the safety of school buses that pick up the students are also important issues.
“Sometimes kindergartens tell you that because there are not enough seats in the school bus, they will send another car to pick up your child, but that is illegal,” she said, adding that kindergartens can also use unreportable “activity” and “art” fees to get around price controls on tuition fees.
According to Ministry of Education statistics, private pre-schools account for about 70 percent of the nation’s kindergartens, with the unions calling for an expanded public-sector kindergarten system.
Taiwan would benefit from more integrated military strategies and deployments if the US and its allies treat the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a “single theater of operations,” a Taiwanese military expert said yesterday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said he made the assessment after two Japanese military experts warned of emerging threats from China based on a drill conducted this month by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command. Japan Institute for National Fundamentals researcher Maki Nakagawa said the drill differed from the
‘WORSE THAN COMMUNISTS’: President William Lai has cracked down on his political enemies and has attempted to exterminate all opposition forces, the chairman said The legislature would motion for a presidential recall after May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday at a protest themed “against green communists and dictatorship” in Taipei. Taiwan is supposed to be a peaceful homeland where people are united, but President William Lai (賴清德) has been polarizing and tearing apart society since his inauguration, Chu said. Lai must show his commitment to his job, otherwise a referendum could be initiated to recall him, he said. Democracy means the rule of the people, not the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), but Lai has failed to fulfill his
A rally held by opposition parties yesterday demonstrates that Taiwan is a democratic country, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, adding that if opposition parties really want to fight dictatorship, they should fight it on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) held a protest with the theme “against green communists and dictatorship,” and was joined by the Taiwan People’s Party. Lai said the opposition parties are against what they called the “green communists,” but do not fight against the “Chinese communists,” adding that if they really want to fight dictatorship, they should go to the right place and face
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
RSS