The Legislative Yuan yesterday approved amendments to the Family Education Act (家庭教育法) that require at least half of the staff at regional home-education centers to be professional home-education personnel or social workers.
The centers, which are overseen by city or county governments, must ensure that the staff ratio is achieved within three years of ratification, the act stipulates.
In addition, all employees whose work involves home education, including home-education center personnel and certified school teachers, are required to attend classes on home education for a certain number of hours each year, it says.
City and county governments must create a family consultation committee, which is to be headed by the mayor or commissioner, it says.
The committee’s responsibilities are to include coordinating efforts between agencies to record the number of birth and parents with newborns; compile marital and divorce data; help with the registration of first graders; and submit the information to medical facilities, elementary schools and household registration offices, it says.
When contacted by social workers about families needing home education, the centers must provide all necessary resources or refer the case to the appropriate services, it says.
As ways of receiving information are changing, the centers are to create content customized for mass media, the Internet, mobile devices and other new technologies to extend the reach of material on home education and available services, the amendments say.
The Ministry of Education and local authorities should also encourage higher education institutions to offer courses on home education to help the public gain a better understanding about how to maintain good relationships with family members, they say.
Central and local authorities should publish incentives to encourage agencies, educational institutions, civic groups and legal entities to provide home education, the amendments says.
The amendments, which further enhance the legal basis for the prevention aspect of home education, are meant to meet public expectations for helping families hit by domestic problems, said the ministry, which drafted the proposals.
The “social security network” would improve with a gradual increase in home-education workers in agencies overseeing police, social work, household registration, health and civil affairs, thereby ensuring that the demand for professional personnel is met, it said.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard