Education groups yesterday expressed concern over new curriculum guidelines scheduled to take effect in August after deputy education ministers Yao Leeh-ter (姚立德) and Fan Sun-lu (范巽綠) resigned.
Yao served as acting education minister three times between April last year and earlier this month, following the resignation of former education ministers Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠), Wu Maw-kuen (吳茂昆) and Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) — the first time anyone has been an acting education minister three times within nine months.
He is reportedly planning to return to teaching at National Taipei University of Technology.
Photo: Rachel Lin , Taipei Times
Fan served as deputy education minister for a little more than three months after taking office in September last year.
New Cabinet members are to be sworn in today and the ministry has planned a farewell party for Yao and Fan in the afternoon.
Yao was responsible for overseeing higher education and vocational schools, while Fan handled compulsory education.
Their departure would require others to take over their work at the ministry.
Among high-level officials, Deputy Minister of Education Lin Teng-chiao (林騰蛟) is the only one to have overseen compulsory education, as he has served as deputy commissioner of the Taipei’s Department of Education and as the commissioner of the New Taipei City Department of Education.
He has also served as the director of the ministry’s Department of Technological and Vocational Education.
Although K12 Education Administration Director-General Peng Fu-yuan (彭富源) has served as the commissioner of the Taichung Department of Education, he is less familiar with the new curriculum guidelines and was not appointed director-general until Dec. 24.
The National Academy for Educational Research, which manages affairs related to curriculum guidelines, has been without a formal president since July last year, with its vice president, Kung-Bin Kuo (郭工賓), doubling as its acting president.
“Compared with the other ministries, the Ministry of Education [MOE] is the least stable one, having had three ministers in one year,” National Parent Education Volunteer Association director-general Wu Fu-pin (吳褔濱) said.
The new curriculum guidelines are an important policy, yet there would be no senior official familiar with them to help the new minister with their implementation, he said, adding that the situation is “deeply worrying.”
To ensure a smooth transition for schools and students, Wu urged the government to abandon its practice of appointing officials from its inner circle and look for talent to fill in the positions left by Yao and Fan.
Separately, Shih Chien University president Michael Chen (陳振貴) on Saturday said the new education minister would face a series of challenges when implementing the new curriculum guidelines.
The ministry must also deal with the transformation of private universities and colleges, as a steep decline in enrollments is expected next year due to the nation’s dwindling birthrate, he added.
Legislation would be needed to provide the legal basis for schools undergoing transformation to prevent problems, Chen said.
The ministry must work on boosting universities’ global competitiveness, he said, adding that it should increase schools’ research funding to improve their ranking and help them train more talent.
Additional reporting by Wu Po-hsuan
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS