The three main candidates in the race for Taipei mayor have highlighted preschool education in their recently unveiled manifestos, and two of them have proposed lowering the age for entry into the compulsory education system.
Independent candidate Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) said on Wednesday, which was Teachers’ Day, that her education platform caters to the needs of people of all ages, including students and school staff.
A major part of her platform is the focus on preschool children, including lowering the age for entry into the K-12 compulsory education system to five years, said Huang, a former Taipei deputy mayor.
Photo: CNA
Huang said she thinks Taipei city councilors will support the idea of making Taipei the first municipality in Taiwan to expand the compulsory education age from the current 6-to-18 range.
If elected mayor, she would budget NT$1.2 billion (US$37.8 million) annually for tuition-free preschool access for children aged three to four.
The policy would alleviate the financial burden on parents, she said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安), the party’s Taipei mayoral candidate, said in his platform that five-year-olds should be included in the compulsory education system to allow equal access to educational opportunities.
If elected mayor, Chiang said that his administration would increase the number of public and nonprofit schools for five-year-olds, including those for children with special needs, as part of a policy to expand compulsory schooling.
Chiang on Friday proposed raising education subsidies for two-to-four-year-olds to make it more affordable for their parents to send them to private preschools.
The Taipei City Government provides a subsidy of NT$13,660 per semester to the parents of three-to-four-year-old private preschool children whose net household income is less than NT$1.21 million per year.
Chiang proposed increasing the subsidy to NT$50,000 per child and including two-year-olds.
Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), the Democratic Progressive Party’s Taipei mayoral candidate, on Friday said that local governments do not have the authority to make changes to the nation’s compulsory education system.
Asked about his two opponents’ proposals, Chen said that he supports the ideas, but added that any reform had to be implemented by the Ministry of Education.
At a campaign event on Sept. 21, Chen focused on the student-teacher ratio of 15:1 in Taipei preschools and said that if he is elected mayor, he would improve the quality of education at that level.
He said he would allocate an annual budget to ensure that at least 1,000 preschools in Taipei can maintain a ratio of 12 students per teacher.
His administration would aim to reach that ratio within four years, Chen said.
His administration would also create an immersive English-language learning environment and introduce programs to encourage more international students to come to Taipei to study, Chen said, adding that English-language proficiency is vital to the internationalization of the city.
The mayoral race in Taipei is part of the nine-in-one local government elections on Nov. 26, when city mayors, county commissioners, city and county councilors, township mayors and council members, and other positions down to the neighborhood level are to be elected.
On Saturday, academics and parents’ organizations urged the candidates running for top-level positions to detail their plans to tackle education issues.
Although the election is less than two months away, more than half of the 95 candidates running for leadership positions in Taiwan’s 22 cities and counties have not put forward an education platform, Taiwan Local Education Development Association head Wang Li-yun (王麗雲) said.
Lee Wen-cheng (李文誠), deputy head of the National Alliance of Parents Organizations, called on the candidates in northern Taiwan to address the issues, saying they are of concern to many voters.
The issues include inadequate access to public and nonprofit preschools, and limited daycare choices for parents of two-year-olds.
He said many parents have been calling for public preschools to extend their hours and close at 7pm instead of 4:30pm to better accommodate working parents.
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