Student learning portfolios can help universities make admissions decisions, but up to 5 percent of high-school students said they could not get help from teachers as they prepared them, academics said on Tuesday at a news conference arranged by the Ministry of Education.
The ministry’s curriculum guidelines released in 2019 for 12-year basic education require students to compile a portfolio of their learning outcomes over the three years of high school.
Since 2022, university applicants have been required to submit their portfolios.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
However, some students told education rights group EdYouth that their teachers refused to assist them, with their learning portfolios, causing concern among parents over children’s rights to apply to universities, two professors said.
Lin Kuo-ming (林國明), a professor in National Taiwan University’s Department of Sociology, last year conducted a survey of high-school students and high-school teachers nationwide, with a response rate of 76.39 percent among 2,825 students and 78.32 percent among 1,228 teachers.
About 5 percent of students said that their teachers were unhelpful with their learning portfolios, while 80 percent of teachers said they helped, Lin said.
The survey showed that 70.85 percent of teachers said they could not help due to tight schedules and overwhelming amounts of work, while 69.87 percent said they were uncertain whether the portfolios would matter to professors, Lin said, urging the ministry to write a policy to guide teachers regarding the matter.
Department of Higher Education Director-General Liao Kao-hsien (廖高賢) said that the ministry would collaborate with the Education Administration to prepare a policy and guide teachers to help students collate their portfolios.
Although some students believed the portfolios would give richer students an advantage over others, the research showed that less than 2 percent of students attended cram schools to polish up their portfolios, while satisfaction with their portfolios was not affected by the urban-rural divide, their parents’ occupations and their family’s social status, Lin said.
Eighty percent of teachers believed that producing a portfolio would help students develop abilities and explore their aspirations, while 90 percent of students reported acquiring a new skill from the work, he said.
Underprivileged students tended to believe that the portfolios helped them explore their aspirations and cultivate skills, he added.
The ministry said that it commissioned National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) to research the opinions of professors who have reviewed written applications for admission to universities, with more than 3,300 surveyed every year.
The percentage of professors who read written applications at the second stage of the university admissions process has increased every year, said Shih Ching-lin (施慶麟), a professor in NSYSU’s Institute of Education.
Most professors review 31 to 60 written applications per year and spend about 14 minutes reading each application, Shih said.
Meanwhile, the National Federation of Teachers’ Unions suggested setting a deadline for uploading PDF files of the portfolios, a format allowed in the university admissions process.
Department of Higher Education head Kuo Chia-yin (郭佳音) said that the issue would be examined, with the needs of students of different backgrounds, such as those from experimental education providers, taken into account.
Additional reporting by CNA
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