The Ministry of Education announced yesterday that aboriginal junior high school students will be given an automatic 20 percent extra towards the scores in their high school joint entrance exams this year.
According to statistics issued by the education ministry, among all aboriginal junior high school graduates in Taiwan each year, only 10 percent of them go to senior high schools, a figure far lower than that of other junior high graduates.
Yesterday, the ministry held a regular briefing to review the preferential treatment to aboriginal students.
After discussing the issue, they agreed to abandon the old system which added 35 more points to the scores of the exams taken by aboriginal students.
To raise the enrollment quota of aboriginal students, the new system will add 20 percent instead. Thus, the better a student's exam result is, the more extra points they will receive.
The new method of scoring will benefit about 7,000 aboriginal junior high graduates around Taiwan.
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