Education groups yesterday expressed concern over new curriculum guidelines scheduled to take effect in August after deputy education ministers Yao Leeh-ter (姚立德) and Fan Sun-lu (范巽綠) resigned.
Yao served as acting education minister three times between April last year and earlier this month, following the resignation of former education ministers Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠), Wu Maw-kuen (吳茂昆) and Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) — the first time anyone has been an acting education minister three times within nine months.
He is reportedly planning to return to teaching at National Taipei University of Technology.
Photo: Rachel Lin , Taipei Times
Fan served as deputy education minister for a little more than three months after taking office in September last year.
New Cabinet members are to be sworn in today and the ministry has planned a farewell party for Yao and Fan in the afternoon.
Yao was responsible for overseeing higher education and vocational schools, while Fan handled compulsory education.
Their departure would require others to take over their work at the ministry.
Among high-level officials, Deputy Minister of Education Lin Teng-chiao (林騰蛟) is the only one to have overseen compulsory education, as he has served as deputy commissioner of the Taipei’s Department of Education and as the commissioner of the New Taipei City Department of Education.
He has also served as the director of the ministry’s Department of Technological and Vocational Education.
Although K12 Education Administration Director-General Peng Fu-yuan (彭富源) has served as the commissioner of the Taichung Department of Education, he is less familiar with the new curriculum guidelines and was not appointed director-general until Dec. 24.
The National Academy for Educational Research, which manages affairs related to curriculum guidelines, has been without a formal president since July last year, with its vice president, Kung-Bin Kuo (郭工賓), doubling as its acting president.
“Compared with the other ministries, the Ministry of Education [MOE] is the least stable one, having had three ministers in one year,” National Parent Education Volunteer Association director-general Wu Fu-pin (吳褔濱) said.
The new curriculum guidelines are an important policy, yet there would be no senior official familiar with them to help the new minister with their implementation, he said, adding that the situation is “deeply worrying.”
To ensure a smooth transition for schools and students, Wu urged the government to abandon its practice of appointing officials from its inner circle and look for talent to fill in the positions left by Yao and Fan.
Separately, Shih Chien University president Michael Chen (陳振貴) on Saturday said the new education minister would face a series of challenges when implementing the new curriculum guidelines.
The ministry must also deal with the transformation of private universities and colleges, as a steep decline in enrollments is expected next year due to the nation’s dwindling birthrate, he added.
Legislation would be needed to provide the legal basis for schools undergoing transformation to prevent problems, Chen said.
The ministry must work on boosting universities’ global competitiveness, he said, adding that it should increase schools’ research funding to improve their ranking and help them train more talent.
Additional reporting by Wu Po-hsuan
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,