Up to 24 percent of homeroom teachers for the upper grades of Taipei elementary schools are substitute teachers acting as semi-permanent teachers, a deeply problematic situation that deserves the Ministry of Education’s attention.
Under the Teachers’ Act (教師法), teachers are required to serve as homeroom teachers. If a school has an established system and a good culture, it should prioritize making full-time teachers homeroom teachers, rather than relying on substitute teachers. Serving as a homeroom teacher is daunting for new educators unfamiliar with a school and its students.
Another issue is that some substitute teachers might pass the teachers’ exam to become regular teachers in a year, while others might want to transfer to other schools. As a result, students are likely to have a new homeroom teacher every other year.
Students need to be guided by more experienced teachers who know them. The current situation is not suited to helping students with special needs or good class management.
It is unimaginable that a “points system” for teachers could be used to intimidate substitute teachers, because, generally, permanent teachers are given priority for administrative posts or to act as homeroom teachers. As the law does not include administrative duties in the obligations of teachers, they have a legitimate reason to avoid such tasks. However, as being homeroom teachers is required, schools should give priority to regular teachers for those posts, and should not exempt certain teachers because they have accumulated more points.
The ministry attaches great importance to eradicating bullying in schools, but is it not another form of bullying when full-time teachers pass homeroom responsibilities to substitute teachers? The Control Yuan should investigate this problem.
Chen Chi-nung is the principal of Shuili Junior High School in Nantou County.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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