Tue, Oct 10, 2000 page8

• We must spend more on education

  • By Liu Yuan-chun and Wang Hsien-ta
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  In March 1994, a delegate from Gansu Province (甘肅省) complained in China's National People's Congress that, "Some schools in Gansu's townships only get two boxes of chalk per semester. The teachers have to use them sparingly, otherwise they won't be able to teach their classes. The central [government] has not been increasing educational expenses. Instead, it keeps cutting them."

  Recently, Wei Duan (韋端), a former director-general of Taiwan's Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), criticized the new Cabinet for making a 10 percent cut in operational educational expenses. Wei called the measure unreasonable and said poor elementary schools may be unable to "afford even brooms" as a result.

  The two complaints sound similar, despite the time and distance between them. But the shortfalls in Taiwan's education budget are not new. Even if we dropped the 10 percent cut, what could poor schools possibly buy with the money?

  One might well ask Wei, if you are so concerned about schools that "can't even afford brooms," do you remember the words you uttered three years ago, when you were DGBAS chief and Constitutional amendments were underway to abolish the fixed annual proportion of the national budget? What did you say then?

  If we visit elementary schools in the countryside, we may think that the buildings and facilities are not bad. But if we ask them what extra-curricular reading materials they have bought over the past year, the answer from most of them will be not a one. According to the ROC Educational Statistics (中華民國教育統計), the total number of books in elementary schools declined by 30,000 last year.

  If we ask them how many videotapes they have and when they bought them, we will find that most of the schools have not added a single videotape to their collection since they bought their VCR. Some schools have even "preserved" the VCRs in cabinets and not used them because they cannot afford maintenance costs. Forget about doing experiments, practicums or events like concerts and plays. There is no hope of that.

  This state of affairs can be summed up in one sentence: "Our education remains limited to blackboards." How can this kind of education not descend to mere "cramming?" Recently, Minister of Education Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗) presided over a ceremony celebrating the ability of all schools of technology in Taiwan to access the Internet. There may be no shortage of hardware necessary to go online. But when the schools can't afford "brooms," how are they to pay for access fees and software?

  In recent years, we have called for attention to the shortage of regular non-personnel budgets in Taiwan's education system. Such expenses include general expenses, materials for experiments and practicals, books for libraries, maintenance, utilities, stationery, travel, transportation and so on. Standards laid down by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 國際合作經濟發展組織), require that this aspect of the education budget accounts for an average 2.56 percent of GDP per capita. According to this standard, non-personnel operating expenses at Taiwan's elementary schools should stand at around NT$9,000 per capita annually.

  But the current situation is: one elementary school in a rural area only gets NT$900 per student -- one tenth of OECD standards. Even in Taipei, schools only get NT$1,500 per student -- one-sixth the OECD average. It is not that the government has no money, but that it does not want to loosen its grip.

  If we set regular spending at NT$3,000 or one third of OECD standards, regular spending will total only NT$6 billion or so. Our question to Wei, the ministers of education and their predecessors is, therefore: why is it that the NT$20 billion to NT$30 billion of annual education subsidies to local governments must always be specifically designated only for visible hardware -- toilets, walls, athletic tracks, VCRs, computers? Why is the ministry unwilling to allocate one fifth of the budget (NT$5 to 6 billion) to "invisible" regular expenses? In fact, such allocation will bring instant results.

  For years, education budgets have included three categories of items that should not be included, such as items in the local governments' education budgets, often duplicated items supplied by way of subsidy from higher authorities. One good thing about the downsizing of the provincial government is that the merging of the provincial budget into the central government makes it easier to delete overlapping budget items.

  Two, the education budgets cover "cultural" expenses. Under OECD methodology, a ballet concert or a "hsiangsheng" (相聲, crosstalks) performance comes under the heading of "cultural" expenses. But Taiwan puts them in the education budget under the heading of "social education."

  Three, the education budget even includes pensions for retiring education workers, such as faculty and other school staff.

  A serious problem is that the central government's education budget for 2001 is NT$174.1 billion. After deducting NT$33.4 billion in subsidies for local governments, the central and provincial governments will actually get to spend NT$140.7 billion -- NT$8 billion less than last year. No wonder national schools are stomping their feet. If, as we very much fear, the education budget of local governments are not raised by 15 percent, the total governmental education budget will be even lower than this year's 3.88 percent of GDP.

  The OECD has statistics on the education budgets of 28 countries, among which only two spend less than 4 percent of GDP! If we are to reach the OECD's average -- 5.1 percent of GDP -- we will need to raise the education budget by NT$125 billion. If we are to raise it to 6 percent (which is the goal of many education reform groups) then we will need to add NT$230 billion.

  Given the international race toward "knowledge economies," if we do not significantly raise our education budgets, we will taste the bitter fruits 10 years from now.

  At a time when all sectors are scrambling to grab money, we may have no other alternative but to raise taxes and enlarge the government's financial pie. Among the many election promises, the one on "no tax hikes" may be better off unfulfilled. This way, we may be able to reach the OECD average in three years.

  Liu Yuan-chun is president of Soochow University. Wang Hsien-ta is an adjunct professor at National Central University and a consultant of the Planning and Evaluation Division of the National Science Council. Translated by Francis Huang
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