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Eric Chu:

Education Is Taiwan's Paramount Issue

Education Is Taiwan's Paramount Issue

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Taiwan's plan for a full, universal high school education system offers hope to the island's youth, but also creates daunting dilemmas for local officials. For New Taipei City, the pressure is on.

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Education Is Taiwan's Paramount Issue

By Rebecca Lin
From CommonWealth Magazine (vol. 478 )

His wealth of executive experience allows him to not only recognize the problems but also actually be a problem solver.

In education, however, the 3.9 million residents of New Taipei City are suffering a serious resource gap vis-a-vis neighboring Taipei. New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu says his educational objectives are to improve the quality of community high schools while establishing magnet high schools to stem the outflow of students.

And he's not all talk. He actually follows through on his promises. Seeking to counteract the uneven geographical distribution, six months into his term of office he set forth plans to upgrade ZhuWei Junior High School to a six-year high school, so that Danshui-area students could attend school closer to home.

But he forthrightly acknowledges that after assuming control of the 40 senior high and vocational high schools within his administrative district next year, he will face two major challenges: a heavy financial burden, and the complexities of planning school enrollment.

That's because any changes or long-term plans will require funding, but Taipei County's administrative upgrade to the new special municipality of New Taipei City was not accompanied by a concurrent upgrade in the scope of its finances.

Prior to the conclusion of our interview, Chu said: "I need to get busy. Taiwan needs to get busy too." His hopes are to keep himself motivated for the work that lies ahead, and ultimately to see the island's education system advance to a higher level. How does Chu, a former vice premier, intend to meet the challenges municipal and county governments will face with the introduction of 12-year universal education? Highlights from the CommonWealth Magazine interview follow:


The Ministry of Education should finalize as soon as possible the criteria by which students entering their first year of junior high school this year will advance to high school three years from now.

But I can't just wait for the ministry to hammer out a policy to which I then react. That's because the biggest difficulty confronting New Taipei City is that the gap between urban and rural areas is too big. Allocation of resources among different areas is lopsided and two-tiered development is emerging among senior high and vocational high schools in various areas resulting from geographical, transportation and community development factors as well as declining birthrates.

Evening Imbalances

So at this stage we want to even the imbalances, including geographical and urban-rural imbalances. What New Taipei City should adopt is a regionally oriented approach.

Not long ago I went out to the Danshui area to announce plans to establish ZhuWei High School, because more than 10,000 Danshui students still have no high school to attend. We evaluated the situation and felt that ZhuWei Junior High School's geographical and environmental conditions were good. It's located in the center of the Danshui area, so we determined that with an infusion of resources it would make a fine community high school.

Meanwhile, next year we begin our plans to create top-flight senior high schools. After August of next year, national senior high schools and vocational high schools  originally under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education will be passed over to the authority of the special municipalities. We'll be injecting even more resources, including equipment and faculty. We'll also seek to improve the quality of those senior high schools that are currently being overlooked so that parents need not relocate in search of decent schools for their children.

Next on the agenda will be the 50,000 students who graduate from New Taipei junior high schools each year, but for whom only 30,000 openings are available in the senior high schools and vocational high schools within New Taipei City. On top of that, we have no so-called magnet or specialized schools, so we have no means of retaining outstanding students.

Bridging Regional Gaps with Magnet Schools

Consequently, in addition to improving senior high schools there is also a need for magnet high schools. Currently, New Taipei has no magnet high schools like Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School, Taipei First Girl's High School or the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University. So we need to arrive at a consensus to transform one or two senior high schools into something like New Taipei Industrial High School or New Taipei First High School. But this will be contingent on the history and conditions of a given school, along with the willingness of principals, faculty and parents to work to make a difference. I will not unilaterally designate them.

If we have one or two magnet schools, alongside Taipei's one or two, this could turn up the inter-city competitive pressure, which would not necessarily be a bad thing. But if New Taipei doesn't have a single one, then kids will invariably head over there (to Taipei).

From now until the handover next year will be a period of preparation, followed by a two-year period of further development, so we have a total of three years of hard work ahead of us to achieve that goal.

In the near future, two things will happen concurrently in New Taipei City. First, on August 1 of next year the Ministry of Education will hand over administration of 40 national senior high schools and vocational high schools, as well as special schools and private senior high schools and private vocational high schools to the municipal government. And that will increase our costs, so there has to be a concomitant increase in our budget.

Second will be formulating the framework for student enrollment and reimbursement for tuition-free students. (The Ministry of Education will only provide reimbursement for senior high school and vocational high school tuition expenses for the first two years. Thereafter, those expenses will be left to the municipal government to cover. Enrollment methodology involves drawing up school districts and determining the proportion of student recruitment through special examinations, for which local governments will be required to submit plans.) This will be the next challenge. So we have to get down to work on both of these simultaneously.

But funding remains the most serious difficulty. Our education budget is NT$46 billion, accounting for 30 percent of our total budget. Once New Taipei assumes administration of the national senior high schools and vocational high schools, a further increase of NT$3.2 billion, or around eight percent, will be required.

Will that shrink other education resources? Naturally, I'll work hard to ensure that kind of problem is not created. But this will require proper prior preparation, and here I must criticize the central government. The five special municipalities have already been upgraded, but relevant financial allocation and public debt laws remain stalled in the Legislative Yuan. Financial resource allocation and ceilings on debt issuance remain stuck at the original county levels, and that is hugely unfair. The laws themselves are conflicted.

This is fundamentally an institutional matter. If the institution needs to be changed, it should be changed. But when elections loom, everybody starts to waver, and a tug-of-war ensues. These are actually national institutions, and the Executive Yuan should negotiate a temporary agreement with the Legislative Yuan; otherwise, the (newly) upgraded special municipalities will run up against new challenges every year.

Right now, I can only express hope that education itself will not be affected, and this is the goal I'm now working hard toward. I've always felt education is the most important thing, and toward that end I persevere. I need to get busy. Taiwan needs to get busy too. It goes without saying that education is Taiwan's paramount issue.

Translated from the Chinese by Brian Kennedy

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