The Ministry of Education should hold discussions and prepare for a possible reopening of schools in September, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yi-hua (林奕華) said yesterday.
Lin, who is a member of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee, made the remarks during an online news conference held by the KMT-affiliated National Policy Foundation to discuss recommendations for a potential return to in-person teaching following the summer break.
Since May 19, schools at all levels have been ordered to suspend in-person instruction as part of a nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert.
Photo: Chen Yun, Taipei Times
The new school year is to begin on Sept. 1 for elementary, junior-high and high schools.
With the new academic year approaching, the ministry still appears to be fixed on the question of relief, Lin said.
“No one is discussing whether schools will open next semester,” she added.
Due to the lack of discussion, not enough preparations have been made for a return to school, she said.
One of the most fundamental issues with such a plan is that the COVID-19 vaccine coverage rate in the nation is not high enough, Lin said.
Even if schools were to reopen, multiple plans would be needed to respond to different situations that could occur, she said.
Furthermore, as the size of each school building is different, a single plan should not be applied to all schools across the nation, she said.
While the hope is that schools would reopen in September, as long as vaccination rates remain lower than desired, the ministry must consider different possibilities and devise plans, she said.
The ministry should also involve teachers and parents in discussions of its plans, she added.
Lo Hui-chun (羅惠群), vice chairman of the Taiwan Counseling Psychologist Union, spoke of the importance of public mental health awareness and called on people to place greater importance on the issue.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, the Ministry of Education could consider hiring more educators and counselors, he said.
Many parents, either out of concern for their children’s studies or because they cannot look after their children due to work, look forward to the resumption of in-person instruction, said Yang Yi-feng (楊益風), chairman of a national educators’ union.
While teachers also look forward to teaching in person again, many of them also believe that schools are not ready to reopen, he said.
Additional reporting by CNA
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS