The Ministry of Education is considering a revised version of the “White Paper on Teacher Education,” which is said to emphasize the training of information technology (IT) teachers in response to the challenges of digitization and the nation’s low birthrate.
The ministry is debating the teacher training policy for the next decade, which is to be proposed in the second half of this year.
There is less demand for teachers due to the low birthrate, so the ministry in 2004 reduced the enrollment quota for teachers’ training programs in universities by more than 50 percent, the white paper says.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
However, the supply of qualified teachers still exceeds demand, while there is a shortage of teachers in some fields, it says.
There is expected to be a shortage of high-school teachers in natural sciences and IT, the white paper says.
IT is a compulsory subject for junior-high students, but professional IT teachers are hard to recruit, so an alternative would be to encourage math, physics, biology or other science teachers to receive further training in IT during the winter or summer vacations, National Elementary and Secondary-School Principals’ Association deputy secretary-general Tsai Ming-kuei (蔡明貴) said yesterday.
Teachers earn less than those working in the IT industry, and IT department heads at schools must also maintain the school’s hardware and software, so there are not a lot of incentives to become an IT teacher, especially in remote areas, New Taipei City Elementary and Secondary School Principals’ Association chairperson Chih Hsu-tai (池旭臺) said.
Ministry data from 2020 to 2022 showed that more than 4,000 people were trained to become natural science teachers, but an average of 130 first-time teachers were recruited every year, the ministry’s Department of Teacher and Art Education Director Wu Hsiao-hsia (武曉霞) said.
Over the same period, about 220 people were trained to become IT teachers, but an average of 20 first-time teachers were recruited every year, she said.
Supply is higher than demand, and the situation should be monitored, Wu said.
The ministry is considering whether to launch a program under which IT workers could take a one-year teachers’ training course, she said.
The ministry is also discussing the possibility of offering government-funded teachers’ training for graduate students with bachelor’s degrees in other fields.
As all teachers are required to be digitally literate, artificial intelligence courses would be added to teachers’ training programs, Wu said.
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