The legislature yesterday voted in favor of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) proposal for a 12-year national education program, despite President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) pledges that senior-high schools and vocational education would be entirely tuition-free from beginning next year, and that all students would be admitted to such schools without entrance examinations.
Under the Senior Secondary Education Act (高級中等教育法) and the amendment to the Junior College Act (專科學校法) passed by the legislature yesterday, an economic threshold will be set to exclude students from more well-off households from tuition support if they opt to study at certain senior-high schools.
The laws require that junior-high schools in each of the nation’s 15 districts provide no less than 75 percent exam-free enrollment, while the remaining 25 percent is to be available for students through entrance examinations who wish to attend schools with particularly strong specialties — such as mathematics and science, fine arts, sports, nursing, computer science or music — with admission rules varying from district to district.
Photo: CNA
Each senior-high school or vocational school must provide at least 25 percent exam-free enrollment every year, the laws stipulate.
During the review, lawmakers of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Taiwan Solidarity Union and the People First Party (PFP) initiated various counterproposals to the KMT’s version, but all 64 KMT lawmakers in the 113-seat legislature voted along the party line to defend the policy U-turn made just two weeks ago.
According to the amendments, the 12-year education program will be composed of the current nine years of schooling for children aged six to 15, which will be compulsory, exam-free and free to all, as well as three years of non-compulsory senior secondary education, to which most students will be admitted without entrance examinations.
PFP caucus whip Thomas Lee (李桐豪) accused the Ma administration of “breach of the principle of good faith that a state should observe toward its people” just to save NT$2.5 billion (US$83.27 million) a year in tuition support.
“Why is the government not able to appropriate NT$2.5 billion to education?” he said.
Education is supposed to play a role in facilitating greater social mobility, but the admission rules for senior education under the 12-year education program act in a diametrically opposite way, DPP Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) said.
Given that senior-high schools admit students not only through exams, but also their performance in various fields and that the schools are not at the same quality levels, students will still face enormous pressures to advance to quality schools, Lin said, adding that “students from socio-economically advantaged families stand a better chance to get into quality schools.”
The program will start to be applied to students currently in the second year of junior-high school when they advance to senior-high schools or vocational schools in August next year.
The government has decided that the tuition-exemption threshold would be set at an annual family income of NT$1.48 million. It was estimated that 14 percent of households in Taiwan would need to pay tuition for their children enrolled in senior-high schools.
KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) praised the policy on tuition fees, saying that the nation is not financially able to support free-to-all senior education.
“The threshold was not set to exclude certain people. Rather, it means that the 14 percent of people who are well-off are offering help to the other 86 percent,” Chen said.
Lawmakers furthermore agreed that the system under which military training instructors are stationed in senior-high schools and vocational schools will be phased out within eight years.
GEARING UP: An invasion would be difficult and would strain China’s forces, but it has conducted large-scale training supporting an invasion scenario, the report said China increased its military pressure on Taiwan last year and took other steps in preparation for a potential invasion, an annual report published by the US Department of Defense on Wednesday showed. “Throughout 2023, Beijing continued to erode longstanding norms in and around Taiwan by employing a range of pressure tactics against Taiwan,” the report said, which is titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 2024.” The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “is preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC by force, if perceived as necessary by Beijing, while simultaneously deterring, delaying or denying
‘LAGGING BEHIND’: The NATO secretary-general called on democratic allies to be ‘clear-eyed’ about Beijing’s military buildup, urging them to boost military spending NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte mentioning China’s bullying of Taiwan and its ambition to reshape the global order has significance during a time when authoritarian states are continuously increasing their aggression, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. In a speech at the Carnegie Europe think tank in Brussels on Thursday, Rutte said Beijing is bullying Taiwan and would start to “nibble” at Taiwan if Russia benefits from a post-invasion peace deal with Ukraine. He called on democratic allies to boost defense investments and also urged NATO members to increase defense spending in the face of growing military threats from Russia
PEACEFUL RESOLUTION: A statement issued following a meeting between Australia and Britain reiterated support for Taiwan and opposition to change in the Taiwan Strait Canada should support the peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s destiny according to the will of Taiwanese, Canadian lawmakers said in a resolution marking the second anniversary of that nation’s Indo-Pacific strategy on Monday. The Canadian House of Commons committee on Canada-Chinese relations made the comment as part of 34 recommendations for the new edition of the strategy, adding that Ottawa should back Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, first published in October 2022, emphasized that the region’s security, trade, human rights, democracy and environmental protection would play a crucial role in shaping Canada’s future. The strategy called for Canada to deepen
TECH CONFERENCE: Input from industry and academic experts can contribute to future policymaking across government agencies, President William Lai said Multifunctional service robots could be the next new area in which Taiwan could play a significant role, given its strengths in chip manufacturing and software design, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman and chief executive C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. “In the past two months, our customers shared a lot of their future plans with me. Artificial intelligence [AI] and AI applications were the most talked about subjects in our conversation,” Wei said in a speech at the National Science and Technology Conference in Taipei. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, counts Nvidia Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Apple Inc and
RSS