The Ministry of Education yesterday said it would reject Taipei, New Taipei City and Keeling’s joint draft plan for amending the ranking system used when applicants exceed a school’s enrollment quota.
Under the K-12 compulsory education program implemented this year, in cases where applicants exceed a school’s enrollment quota, places are awarded according to a complicated series of rankings which take into account students’ learning performance across various fields, levels scored on the Comprehensive Assessment Program and how high students place a school on their list of preferences.
Students are initially ranked according to a comprehensive score in which all three elements are worth 30 points. In cases where students’ comprehensive scores are tied, they are then subjected to a series of re-rankings which compare different elements of the comprehensive score until the tie is broken.
In addition to directly comparing students’ school preference lists and performances across various fields, levels scored on the Comprehensive Assessment Program are broken down and directly compared according to ever finer levels which more closely match the students’ exact scores.
The ordering of the rankings students within the three cities’ are subjected to has been changed in the proposal by the local governments. The changes would increase the relative importance of the Comprehensive Assessment Program by moving up measures based on students’ scores in the exam.
Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) said the ministry rejected the proposal because it violated legal requirements that finer levels of comparison based on the Comprehensive Assessment Program only be used as a last resort when all other measures of comparison had been exhausted.
Taipei’s Department of Education said such measures were necessary to ensure fairness in highly competitive school districts.
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