Fierce competition and weak regulation have made deceptive marketing and legally dubious practices widespread among private kindergartens, teachers’ union members said yesterday.
“Private kindergartens exist to make money, which gives rise to a wide variety of sales pitches and other gimmicks,” National Federation of Teachers’ Unions early childhood education committee member Lai Min-li (賴閔莉) said, citing deceptive statements about the quality of teachers.
“Many kindergartens emphasize that their teachers are young when in reality low pay forces them to hire inexperienced teachers and they also suffer from a high turnover rate,” Lai said. “While they say that all of their teachers are ‘qualified instructors,’ a significant percentage could be ‘instructional caretakers’ or even ‘assistant instructional caretakers’ rather than formal teachers.”
Instructional caretakers are subject to looser educational and licensing requirements when compared with formal teachers, with regulations limiting assistant instructional caretakers to a third of kindergartens’ instructors, she said, adding that it was difficult to enforce the rules requiring schools to prominently display their instructors’ qualifications.
“The qualifications can be up the day kindergartens are evaluated by inspectors, but then taken down the next. Because evaluations take place every five years, it is possible that the kindergartens have not updated the instructors’ qualifications to reflect their new teachers, so it is important for parents to examine and make comparisons,” she said, adding that setting standards for fees and ensuring the safety of school buses that pick up the students are also important issues.
“Sometimes kindergartens tell you that because there are not enough seats in the school bus, they will send another car to pick up your child, but that is illegal,” she said, adding that kindergartens can also use unreportable “activity” and “art” fees to get around price controls on tuition fees.
According to Ministry of Education statistics, private pre-schools account for about 70 percent of the nation’s kindergartens, with the unions calling for an expanded public-sector kindergarten system.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
RESPONSE: The government would investigate incidents of Taiwanese entertainers in China promoting CCP propaganda online in contravention of the law, the source said Taiwanese entertainers living in China who are found to have contravened cross-strait regulations or collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be subject to fines, a source said on Sunday. Several Taiwanese entertainers have posted on the social media platform Sina Weibo saying that Taiwan “must be returned” to China, and sharing news articles from Chinese state media. In response, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has asked the Ministry of Culture to investigate whether the entertainers had contravened any laws, and asked for them to be questioned upon their return to Taiwan, an official familiar with the matter said. To curb repeated
Myanmar has turned down an offer of assistance from Taiwanese search-and-rescue teams after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck the nation on Friday last week, saying other international aid is sufficient, the National Fire Agency said yesterday. More than 1,700 have been killed and 3,400 injured in the quake that struck near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay early on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock. Worldwide, 13 international search-and-rescue teams have been deployed, with another 13 teams mobilizing, the agency said. Taiwan’s search-and-rescue teams were on standby, but have since been told to stand down, as