The Ministry of Education plans to amend the Supplementary Education Act (補習及進修教育法) to mandate that cram-school teachers use their real names when applying for teaching jobs at private institutes, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said yesterday.
Pan made the announcement at a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee, where discussion focused on how to prevent sexual harassment and sexual assault at cram schools.
The public gives importance to screening staff hired by cram schools and the ministry is considering setting forth punishments for institutes that fail to report cases of sexual harassment or sexual assault to education authorities, Pan said.
The ministry plans to raise the level of the act, thus granting it jurisdiction to require cram schools to show teachers’ real names when recruiting students, so that parents can learn about their backgrounds — including education levels — before deciding whether to enroll their children.
Cram-school teachers adopting “stage names” is believed to have stemmed from the practice of teachers using false degrees to attract students and public servants working as cram-school teachers, which is against the law.
Writer Li Yi-han (林奕含) last month committed suicide due to trauma after allegedly being sexually assaulted by cram-school teacher Chen Kuo-hsing (陳國星) nine years ago.
Following Lin’s suicide, it was discovered that Chen had lied about his education throughout his career.
Chen, who teaches Chinese literature at the high-school level, said in advertisements that he graduated from National Taiwan University Department of Chinese Literature and National Sun Yat-sen University Graduate Institute of Literature, but he only attended night school at the former and had never been to the latter, as there is no such institute.
National Sun Yat-sen University employees said that Chen attended a graduate program offered by its department of Chinese literature, but dropped out.
The ministry would also create a database of unfit cram-school teachers in the same fashion as its National Query System for Unfit Teachers for certified teachers by requesting data from government agencies, including the Ministry of Health and Welfare and National Police Agency, Pan said.
The education ministry would conduct a search of the system within two weeks to ascertain whether there are any teachers expelled from the national education system working at cram schools, he said.
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