The Ministry of Education plans to amend the Supplementary Education Act (補習及進修教育法) to mandate that cram-school teachers use their real names when applying for teaching jobs at private institutes, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said yesterday.
Pan made the announcement at a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee, where discussion focused on how to prevent sexual harassment and sexual assault at cram schools.
The public gives importance to screening staff hired by cram schools and the ministry is considering setting forth punishments for institutes that fail to report cases of sexual harassment or sexual assault to education authorities, Pan said.
The ministry plans to raise the level of the act, thus granting it jurisdiction to require cram schools to show teachers’ real names when recruiting students, so that parents can learn about their backgrounds — including education levels — before deciding whether to enroll their children.
Cram-school teachers adopting “stage names” is believed to have stemmed from the practice of teachers using false degrees to attract students and public servants working as cram-school teachers, which is against the law.
Writer Li Yi-han (林奕含) last month committed suicide due to trauma after allegedly being sexually assaulted by cram-school teacher Chen Kuo-hsing (陳國星) nine years ago.
Following Lin’s suicide, it was discovered that Chen had lied about his education throughout his career.
Chen, who teaches Chinese literature at the high-school level, said in advertisements that he graduated from National Taiwan University Department of Chinese Literature and National Sun Yat-sen University Graduate Institute of Literature, but he only attended night school at the former and had never been to the latter, as there is no such institute.
National Sun Yat-sen University employees said that Chen attended a graduate program offered by its department of Chinese literature, but dropped out.
The ministry would also create a database of unfit cram-school teachers in the same fashion as its National Query System for Unfit Teachers for certified teachers by requesting data from government agencies, including the Ministry of Health and Welfare and National Police Agency, Pan said.
The education ministry would conduct a search of the system within two weeks to ascertain whether there are any teachers expelled from the national education system working at cram schools, he said.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it