October 19, 2008

國教大餅 Sherry

Sorry I' m Late



Government extend compulsory education to 12 years, is it merely a dream?

 

 

Premier Su Tseng-chang made an announcement that the government has decided to prolong the compulsory educational system to 12 years and hoped to start preparations from this year, while delivering his administrative report at the Legislative Yuan.

The aim of the program is to narrow the gap in tuition between public and private senior high and vocational schools, and to reform the modes of high school entrance, at the same time, senior high and vocational schools will be incorporated into communities. The government plan to reach the goal of exam-free entrance for high school. It seems that this program could not be implemented since the following reasons:

From Chu Hui-sen to Huang Rong-tsun, many ministers of the Ministry of Education have tried thirty years to put 12-year compulsory education into practice, but none of them really carried out this program. Presumably, there are many difficulties on the path of 12-year compulsory education.

The enrollment of junior students advance to high school including non-official education is over 108% in Taiwan . Normally, without the concern for whether the education is compulsory or not, there are enough students take higher education, as a foundation of 12-year compulsory education. The people at school age is decreasing year by year, to prolong the compulsory education is expectable. However, the government should not boast at election times, employ this program just as a vote-wining scheme.

First of all, does Taiwan have the economic basis to carry out 12-year compulsory education? Could the government provide enough facilities for the program, such as teachers, curricula, and school buildings? The average income in Taiwan was US1, 3000 in 2007. the income was about US30,000 I Germany, Japan and France, but public or compulsory education in these countries are less than 12 years. If the government brings this program into practice without take finances into consideration, and lack of proper policies, 12-year compulsory education would simply lead us to more troubles.

In the next place, the government should take high school entrance system into account. To enter senior high schools, students could apply multi-channel admission system; take The Basic Competence Test for Junior High School Students or through recommendation. Even if the government prolongs compulsory education into 12 years, problems as the students’ learning pressure and high school entrance system are extend to senior high schools. As the current school high school entrance system has no improvement, or there is not a better substitute project, the 12-year compulsory education is just to postpone students’ learning pressure to their later educations.

Thirdly, why should we prolong the compulsory education? If the current educational problems remain unsolved, there might be more troubles like curricula, cram schools, big classes in big schools, student crimes, students unwilling to study and various school violence. It is no use to extend the compulsory education under a fact that real problems of our educational system still exist. 

Fourthly, our government should think about how to improve education quality in a time that school age people start to decline. According to the statistic released by Council for Economic Planning and Development, there are 1070,000 students studied in senior high school in 2005, and it declined to 970,000 in 2006, about 100,000 people shrink in five years. From the point of view of demography and education resources, the government should promote the education quality instead of extend the quantity of student to meet people’s need.

Moreover, MOE took vocational education as a main subject to prolong compulsory education in the past, but the government showed no sign of wishing to promote a 12-year educational system. It is improper to take vocational education as experiment of the 12-year compulsory education. If the government wants to take the program into practice, it should not only cover the vocational school at the beginning, and should not provide the opportunity only for those disadvantaged students. MOE should take senior high school as the testee. The government should consider the reaction of those “star school” which have good school traditions, such as Chien-Kuo Senior High School , Taichung First High School , Tainan First High School , Taipei First Girl High School , Taichung Girl High School , Kaohsiung High School , Kaohsiung Girl High School and Tainan Girl High School . If the MOE apply 12-year compulsory education to replace the system of high school entrance, there would be more negative voices from these “star school” at that time.

At Last, our successive ministers proposed different projects and titles in the program. At present, it is named public compulsory education. In other words, the government should explain the 12-year education system is compulsory education, public education or basic public education, the mentioned education form are different in education concepts, education form, and the distribution and application in budget. The government will pay for the fee of compulsory education, but the government would only pay parts of the fee of public education.

In short, I do not hope that the government draws a big flat dream of 12-year compulsory education for us. If we put the program into practice with all these problems, the dream would never be fulfilled.

 

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