Nearly 97 percent of senior and vocational high school teachers said their teaching load increased after the implementation last year of new curriculum guidelines, a survey by the National Senior High School Teachers’ Union showed yesterday.
In the survey, 93.9 percent of teachers said they were teaching more than the basic 16 class periods per week that full-time senior and vocational high school teachers should teach.
According to the survey, 18.3 percent of teachers reported teaching one to two periods more than the basic 16, 31.3 percent had an additional three or four, 22.9 percent five or six, 14.4 percent seven or eight, and 7 percent nine or more.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The survey asked teachers whether the number of subjects or types of classes they taught increased after the implementation of the new curriculum guidelines.
It found that 87 percent of teachers were teaching between one and five new courses, the union said.
The results were based on 982 online and paper responses collected between Sept. 11 and Tuesday, the union said.
Responses came from homeroom teachers, full-time teachers, presidents of teachers’ associations, as well as teachers doubling as administrators in senior and vocational high schools across the nation, it said.
“Teachers are overworked,” said union president Kao Meng-lin (高孟琳), who teaches in Taoyuan.
The union urged the government to increase the quota for senior and vocational high school teachers and to reduce their teaching hours.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yi-hua (林奕華), who attended the union’s news conference in Taipei, said that while their teaching load might have increased, teachers have only so many hours in a day.
With more classes but limited time, teachers can only spend so much time in each class, which affects their ability to meet the goals of the new curriculum guidelines, she said.
Each minor or major change that has been introduced during this years-long education reform has created panic among parents and sparked worry among students, KMT Legislator Wan Mei-ling (萬美玲) told the news conference.
To a great extent, it is the teachers who have paid, she said.
While discussion has focused on helping students adapt to the new system and aiding parents in understanding how to support their children through these changes, few have spoken about how to help teachers adapt and provide them with good support and resources, she said.
“After so many years of education reform, no one has ever asked teachers: ‘What is it that you need?’” Wan said, adding that people take it for granted that teachers would cooperate.
“Bureaucratic talk is not enough to make teachers feel supported,” she said, calling on the Ministry of Education to reduce their teaching hours and to raise the quota for teachers to a level that is sufficient.
Kao said the union is to continue gathering survey responses through the end of the year to present to the ministry for use as reference in its policymaking process.
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