The government is to provide a budget to employ 1,600 teaching assistants over the next four years to help students in special education programs in a bid to deter violent incidents in the classroom, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said yesterday.
The cost of hiring 400 teaching assistants a year for four years is estimated at NT$1 billion (US$31.72 million), Pan told a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee in Taipei.
Lawmakers said they are concerned about personal safety in classroom after a string of violent incidents and bullying. People were shocked at a widely circulated video on Sunday evening that showed a student attacking his teacher, repeatedly punching and kicking the educator at a Taipei high school.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
It was a case of a special education student who is known to be prone to violent behavior, Pan said.
“We very much regret the injuries sustained by the teacher and have expressed our concern about what happened,” he said.
Taiwan follows the global trend by including students who have special education needs in regular classrooms, he said.
In general, students with special needs are integrated, whereas in the past they were segregated at special schools.
The Special Education Act (特殊教育法) defines students with special education needs as those who have disabilities due to physiological or psychological disorders and are in need of special services, such as those with intellectual disability, visual or hearing impairments, speech disorders, autism, emotional or behavior disorders and other forms of learning disability.
“We have faced a big challenge integrating these students in schools as it required extra resources... Teachers must have reasonable authority to provide guidance to students, while teaching assistants can help handle those with specific needs,” Pan said. “Schools must regularly monitor students who are prone to violent and emotional outbursts, and must provide some mechanism for counseling and assisting with interactions with others in classroom.”
Separately yesterday, the National Federation of Teachers’ Unions (NFTU) in a statement urged the ministry to deal with classroom safety problems, calling for a “security staff” unit at all schools.
“The student who carried out the attack certainly could not be calmed by mere talk; it required physical intervention, but both the teacher and student lacked professional training in the techniques of stopping such an attack. School administrative staff also lack this training; therefore, to have friendly and safe schools, a dedicated security staff unit is needed,” it said.
“In this incident the teacher was attacked and sustained injuries, but he was not the only one at risk; all students at the school could potentially have been victims. Violent incidents in school can involve either regular students or those in special education programs,” NFTU chairman Ho Chun-liang (侯俊良) said.
The ministry must take into account overall security issues in schools and must upgrade safety measures, especially by swiftly reacting to violent incidents, he said.
Additional reporting by Jason Pan
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