The Taiwan Parent Education Association on Wednesday urged high schools nationwide to refrain from publishing the scores of aptitude tests for high-school and college admission, echoing calls from protesting students a day earlier.
Some high schools published the names of students who achieved a perfect score on the General Scholastic Ability Test (GSAT), which ended on Jan. 20, the association said in a statement.
This practice causes students to feel stressed over their test scores and contradicts the Ministry of Education’s direction to not use test scores as the only metric for being admitted to or applying to universities, the statement said.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
High schools across the country should stop publishing students’ test scores, and the media should stop reporting on this issue to allow more students to be vetted by universities based on their achievements in a range of areas, not just their test scores, it added.
To promote diversity in school education from an early age, junior-high schools should also ditch the practice of publishing students’ Comprehensive Assessment Program scores, the statement said.
On Tuesday, a student group called EdYouth, along with student representatives from around the country, held a news conference in Taipei to call for an end to the practice, which they said promotes elitism.
They cited recent media reports about Kaohsiung Municipal Girls’ Senior High School not having any students who achieved a perfect score on the GSAT this year.
Cheng Wen-yi (鄭文儀), the school’s principal, told reporters that “girls are generally weaker in math than boys,” sparking controversy.
Cheng later in the day said the school would not publish students’ GSAT scores, as such a move “does not do much.”
Meanwhile, the ministry said it would instruct schools to refrain from stereotyping when defining students’ success.
Since 2022, Taiwan has instituted a “diversified channels for university entrance” program, which allows students to take skill tests on musical instruments, sports or the arts, and present the scores when applying to relevant departments at universities or securing recommendations from high schools to their chosen undergraduate programs.
However, most students still need to present their GSAT score if they want to maximize their chances of being admitted to their chosen undergraduate programs, regardless of which channel they choose.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS