Byline:PAT GAO
Publication Date:07/01/2012
Taiwan is moving toward an entrance exam-free, tuition-free education model for senior high schools.
On April 24 this year, the Ministry of Education (MOE) announced formal plans to extend universal education in Taiwan from nine to 12 years. Whereas children have been required to attend elementary through junior high school for decades, the new program is designed to ensure that students spend an additional three years at academically oriented senior high schools, vocational senior high schools or junior colleges. The new program is expected to be implemented in 2014, and junior high school students who are now in the seventh grade will be the first to be affected by the change.
The legal basis for the 12-year education plan began coming together in March this year, when the Executive Yuan submitted a draft of the Senior High Education Act and draft amendments to the Junior College Act to the Legislative Yuan. Funding will come from revisions to the Compilation and Administration of Education Expenditures Act. Those revisions stipulate that the education budget will increase this year from 21.5 percent of the nation’s average net annual revenue to 22.5 percent, thereby providing an estimated additional NT$20 billion (US$667million) to fund the expansion of senior high school education.
“The 12-year education policy falls in line with international trends such as those in Japan and the European Union to offer young students a longer period of basic learning. That helps them explore their own potential and develop a broader vision of the world,” says Yeh Ta-hua (葉大華), secretary-general of the Taiwan Alliance for Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare.
While the new draft act and amendments will update Taiwan’s regulatory framework, in practice the vast majority of Taiwan’s junior high school students already continue studying in public or private senior high schools or junior colleges. In 2011, for example, 97.67 percent of all junior high school graduates went on to upper secondary education, according to statistics from the MOE. Given that so many students attend senior high, one could be forgiven for questioning why the government would bother drafting the new regulations in the first place. The answer is that the legislation’s real goals are tempering the influence of entrance exams on Taiwan’s secondary education system and more evenly distributing resources among all regions across the country.
According to Wang Ru-jer (王如哲), a professor at National Taiwan Normal University’s Department of Education and vice president of the MOE’s National Academy for Educational Research (NAER), the 12-year program’s core mission is to provide upper secondary students in each of Taiwan’s 15 school districts with more equitable, high-quality and diverse education resources. “Ideally, junior high graduates would move on to a senior high school in their neighborhood without having to take and pass an entrance exam,” Wang says. “It would be just like the way students now go from elementary to junior high school.” In the 2011–2012 school year, Taiwan had 336 academically oriented senior high schools and 155 for vocational students. Of the total 491 high schools, 283 were public and 208 were private.
As virtually any ninth grader would readily confirm, entrance exams for Taiwan’s senior high schools cast a long shadow over their junior high years. Currently, most junior high school students who wish to continue their education must take the Basic Competency Test (BCT), which evaluates Chinese, English, math, natural science and social science abilities. Unlike Taiwan’s elementary schools, junior high schools and most senior high vocational schools and junior colleges, most of the country’s academically oriented public senior high schools are ranked in order of quality. As it stands now, admission to a “star” public senior high school—one that has a high ranking and a prestigious academic reputation—is selective and depends almost solely on the outcome of a student’s BCT.
Smaller Role for Exams
The draft act and amendments currently under review in the Legislative Yuan are intended to reduce the importance of exams in the senior high admission process. Under the 12-year system, the BCT will be replaced by the Joint Junior High School Education Test. More importantly, scores from the new test will play a much smaller role in the selection process. Under the current BCT scoring system, students receive a percentage ranking between 1 and 99, and in many cases that score is the only factor schools consider when admitting students. Results of the new test, however, will only be ranked as highly competent, competent or not competent. In addition, that new ranking will only constitute a maximum of one-third of the overall score by which schools evaluate prospective students, if such a score is necessary.
The eventual goal of the new system is to make senior high school admissions mostly exam-free, with exceptions made only for students with advanced academic ability or for those specializing in subjects such as art or music. On the school district level, the MOE blueprint dictates that 75 percent of all admissions to a district’s senior high schools and junior colleges must be made without taking exam results into account by the 2014–2015 school year. For the 2019–2020 school year, that figure will rise to 85 percent in each district.
On the individual school level, if the number of applicants to a senior high does not exceed its exam-free admissions quota, all applicants will be accepted. If the number of applicants exceeds the quota, admissions will be determined according to criteria that are allowed to vary somewhat among the 15 school districts. Those criteria may include results from the new test; performance in areas like art, competitions and physical fitness; experience in holding leadership positions and participation in volunteer activities.
The complexity of the new admissions system has drawn a degree of criticism from those who would do away with entrance exams altogether. “It doesn’t need to be so complicated,” says Gordan Hsieh (謝國清), chief executive of the 12-Year Education Civic Office of the National Alliance of Parents Organizations (NAPO). “It should just be seen as a transition to an exam-free system.”
Some senior high schools are already moving toward exam-free admissions. Taipei Municipal Zhongzheng Senior High School, for example, will admit 400, or 55 percent, of its new students for the 2012–2013 school year without weighing BCT results in the selection process. Meanwhile, most students applying to study in Zhongzheng’s specialized departments for dance, fine arts, music and sports have not been required to take the BCT for a number of years.
Any revolution inevitably meets with a degree of resistance, however, and star school administrators and teachers, ambitious parents and even some students have expressed opposition to the MOE’s blueprint for change. The high ranking of Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School, for example, gives it the ability to select “elite” students. As it stands now, just 15 percent of the members of Jianguo’s incoming classes are granted admission based on criteria other than BCT scores, and there are those who would like that system to continue. “Under the 12-year education program, Jianguo will lose its value,” one student wrote in a Facebook posting.
Other Jianguo students have expressed concerns about the learning difficulties that could be encountered in classes in which students have a wide range of academic competence. “Some of the new students may be unable to recognize even the 26 letters of the English alphabet,” another Jianguo student said on a television news program.
NAPO’s Hsieh points out, however, that the long-established practice of allowing star schools to select students with outstanding exam scores has posed challenges in previous education reform efforts. “Now it’s time to tackle this issue seriously,” he says. “For one thing, it seems that such a practice is intended to allow star schools to retain a high profile, rather than for the good of students themselves.”
Wu Chung-tai (吳忠泰), a teacher at Taipei Municipal Dun-Hua Junior High School and secretary-general of the National Teachers’ Association of the Republic of China, says that the drive to gain admission to a star school puts a great amount of pressure on junior high school students. There is little reason for students to undergo such stress, Wu says, as they can achieve just as much or more by attending a school in their neighborhood.
Hsieh backs Wu’s assessment, pointing to the results of a nationwide MOE survey released in November 2007 that tracked students who had scored in the top 10 percent of the BCT. Of that group, the survey showed students who chose to attend nearby senior high schools performed better in university entrance exams than students who chose to attend more distant star schools. In the survey’s summary, the MOE concluded that students study more effectively when they live closer to schools, as a shorter commute means they have more time for learning and receiving emotional support from family members.
One possible reason that parents and students favor star schools is the perception that such institutions have more experienced, capable teachers. Wu and Hsieh dispute that notion, however. “In fact, the quality of faculty members and facilities is quite balanced among Taiwan’s various schools,” Hsieh says.
“Parents don’t have to be too worried,” Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧) says of concerns over discrepancies in academic quality among schools. As Chiang has noted on a number of occasions, by early next year, 80 percent of all academic and vocational senior high schools in Taiwan are expected to have received “excellent” certifications from the MOE. The certification process evaluates the performance of a school’s students, teachers and administrators, as well as the quality of its curriculum and facilities, among other factors.
Boosting Rural Schools
To help senior high schools that do poorly in the certification program, since 2007 the MOE has provided a special budget that enables schools to improve their facilities and hire academic advisers. The MOE’s drive to help underperforming schools is especially important for Taiwan’s rural and remote areas, which have a disproportionate number of such schools. The primary reason for the poor performance of rural schools is a lack of funding, a situation reformers hope to see addressed under the new system. “Under the 12-year program, it will be crucial to ensure that education resources are distributed in a fair and equal manner across the country,” Wang says.
While much of the discussion about 12-year schooling has centered on exams and star schools, vocational education and private schools could also be impacted by the new legislation. “Elite education is not the only issue to be addressed, as it doesn’t involve a very big number of students,” Yeh says, adding that she is more concerned about vocational education. During the 2011–2012 school year, around 366,000, or 48 percent, of Taiwan’s senior high students attended vocational schools, an increase over the 44 percent enrollment in the 2005–2006 school year. “I hope the 12-year policy will continue the emphasis that has been put on senior high vocational education in recent years,” Yeh says.
Private senior high schools will also experience changes under the 12-year program. While just 5.3 percent of the country’s students attended private elementary and junior high schools during the 2011–2012 school year, around 47 percent of all senior high students attended private, academically oriented schools or private vocational schools. Most families in Taiwan prefer to send their children to public high schools because their tuition averages just NT$6,000 (US$200) per semester. Students who fail to score high enough on the BCT usually have to enroll in private high schools, where tuition and fees typically cost four times more than public schools per semester, thereby placing a significant financial burden on lower income families.
For the 2010–2011 school year, the MOE began offering subsidies of up to NT$17,000 (US$570) to offset the higher tuition students face at private senior high schools. Under the 12-year system, MOE subsidies for senior high students in private schools and junior colleges will increase to cover 100 percent of tuition, although students will still have to pay miscellaneous fees. That plan will have the effect of making basic tuition free at all of Taiwan’s public and private senior high schools.
Support for the MOE’s subsidy program is not unequivocal, however. “Some exclusive [senior high] schools are even better in quality than public ones. If you subsidize their high fees, it would contradict the wealth-redistribution approach,” NAER’s Wang says. “On the other hand, if the private schools that aren’t so good can still receive the subsidy, then they wouldn’t have much incentive to improve.” Wang believes the government should not subsidize tuition at those exclusive private senior high schools, just as it does not offer subsidies for most private elementary and junior high schools. As for private senior high schools that perform poorly, Yeh calls for an evaluation system that “works for real” and has the ability to force schools to close if necessary.
In essence, the 12-year education program is a continuation of a decades-long effort to replace Taiwan’s exam-oriented, elitist approach to education with a more pluralistic, happier learning model. That drive began in the 1980s as Taiwan’s society started a process of rapid liberalization. Signs of concrete progress appeared in 1998, when the Executive Yuan approved the Commission on Educational Reform’s new guidelines for, among other things, diversifying school curricula and creating multiple admission policies intended to recognize a wide range of abilities.
Now, in the view of many education experts, Taiwan’s low birthrate and consequently declining number of students offer a vital opportunity to continue that progress. With fewer students, such experts believe that the additional educational resources accompanying the 12-year plan should be distributed in a fairer, more balanced way, thereby giving more students an opportunity to succeed. NAER’s Wang says that the central goal of the 12-year education program is building a sound education infrastructure with sufficient resources to ensure that students of all backgrounds are able to develop their own areas of strength—unless they choose not to do so. As the MOE’s Chiang noted in his announcement of the landmark policy, “We have no time to waste and can’t afford to delay the plan.”
Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw
