The Ministry of Education will ask for more money for its “new immigrant education” policy in the 2018 fiscal year, Deputy Minister of Education Tsai Ching-hwa (蔡清華) said.
Tsai said the ministry would ask the Legislative Yuan’s Education and Culture Committee to approve increasing the funding to NT$250 million (US$8.33 million).
The policy aims to give children with a Southeast Asian parent an advantage in language and culture that could be helpful in their professional lives, Tsai said.
The project was budgeted at NT$98.7 million for fiscal 2016 and NT$176 million for the current fiscal year, Tsai said.
As part of the 12-year compulsory education program that is set to begin in 2019, courses in languages spoken by new immigrants to Taiwan are to be included as a class in all elementary schools, an elective for junior-high school students and a second foreign language option for high schoolers.
Schools would also be encouraged to host events that would allow children with a new immigrant parent to “seek their roots” in their parents’ countries, and to offer programs that would provide students with a view of what it would be like to work overseas, Tsai said
With the majority of children of Southeast Asian spouses of high school age, the ministry plans to launch a project in August to cultivate and train personnel for Southeast Asia-based Taiwanese companies, he added.
The program would depend on cooperation of vocational high schools, technical universities and Taiwanese firms based in Southeast Asia, Deputy Minister of Education Yao Leeh-ter (姚立德) said.
Students enrolled in the program would be fast-tracked into technical universities without having to take the college entrance exam, and upon graduation they would be hired by Taiwanese firms, Yao said.
They would be considered part-time employees, offered NT$100,000 per year in scholarships and other funding until they earn their degrees, at which point they would have the option of traveling to Southeast Asia to work at a Taiwanese company.
Proficiency in the language of their Southeast Asian parent would be a requirement for admission to the program, Yao said, adding that the ministry hopes the program would allow the Taiwan-born youngsters of Southeast Asian heritage to respect the parents’ mother tongue.
The ministry has budgeted NT$50 million for the next fiscal year for higher education facilities and vocational schools to promote the policies, Yao said.
One policy that has proven successful was encouraging vocational universities to seek students from Southeast Asian nations, allowing them to intern in their home nation during summer and winter vacations, and offering direct employment at the managerial level upon completion of their studies, Yao said.
Taiwan this year attracted 38,233 students from Southeast Asia seeking a bachelors’ degree, post-graduate degree or multiple degrees, an increase of 5,181 over last year, Yao said.
More than 67 percent of those students already had one degree, which is an increase of 4,000 student from last year, he said.
With new university courses starting in the spring, the number of students from Southeast Asia could increase by 20 percent, he said.
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