"EDUCATIONAL RULES AND OPTIONS IN TAIWAN"

by Timothy Beach

Taiwan's Compulsory Education Law requires Taiwanese children to attend school from first grade through junior high.

Children of any age who enter Taiwan on a foreign passport are not subject to the Compulsory Education Law and therefore enjoy a much greater degree of educational freedom than children who do not hold foreign passports. For more information, please see the section below entitled Options for Foreign Passport-holders.

At present, high school attendance in Taiwan is neither compulsory nor guaranteed. The requirements for entrance into accredited public and private high schools in Taiwan usually include holding a junior high diploma and receiving acceptable results on the High School Entrance Exam. High schools in Taiwan are ranked, and so the higher the ranking of a particular school, the higher the Entrance Exam score required by the school for admittance. Public high schools are often preferred because their fees are low or else free. Students who fail to score high enough on the High School Entrance Exam typically enroll in private high schools where they must pay varying rates of fees, often creating a tremendous financial burden for families of modest means.

Most students in Taiwan hope to score high enough on the High School Entrance Exam that they will be accepted by a respected high school which, over the course of three years, they expect will better prepare them to perform well on the University Entrance Exam. The results of the University Entrance Exam will determine not only which Taiwanese university students qualify to enter, but also which department within the university that they qualify to enter. Because there exists a strong cultural bias in favor of choosing a more prestigious university, many students end up sacrificing the opportunity to choose their preferred major (and thus their preferred career) for the sake of graduating from the more favored university! (No wonder most of my students can't tell me what kind of work they want to do when they grow up! Too many factors may seem to be beyond their control!)

For students whose parents are considering having them attend university overseas, there are other options available that render both the High School and the University Entrance Exams irrelevant. Please see the section below entitled Possible Options for Junior High Graduates.

Educational options for elementary and junior high age children can be divided into two broad categories: traditional schools and "non-schooling".

Traditional schools can be further divided into two groups: public schools and traditional private schools. Public and traditional private schools have one particular feature in common: they both strictly follow the Ministry of Education (MOE) prescribed curriculum, the primary aim of which is to prepare students to take the High School Entrance Exam after they graduate from junior high school. Traditional private schools include both secular and religious schools. Even Protestant and Catholic schools may be categorized as traditional Chinese schools because their curricula and tests are designed to comply with MOE regulations.

"Non-schooling" can also be further divided into two groups: family-based homeschooling and group homeschooling (also referred to as private "non-schools" or alternative schools).

Family-based Homeschooling. Taiwan's Educational Law has changed in recent years and now allows parents to apply to their local Educational Bureau for permission to homeschool their children. However, the law has given the local city and county educational bureaus a great deal of authority in deciding how much freedom parents will have in homeschooling. Consequently, the specific rules and requirements vary greatly from one locality to another. In most localities, homeschooled children are required to attend their local school one day a week and return to school during the weeks that monthly and semester tests are administered.

Group Homeschooling (i.e. "Non-schools" or alternative schools). The law also allows parents to form a group homeschool (a "non-school"), or enroll in an existing one. These "non-schools" are, in essence, alternative private schools. They do not usually receive government support, and so must raise their own funds. However, they enjoy a great deal of freedom in deciding the content of their curricula. The local Educational Bureaus typically evaluate the performance of the non-schools in their jurisdiction on an annual basis. Students attending non-schools are not required to attend a public school at all, and are not required to take public school tests. However, non-school students are registered at a local public school and the non-school administrators report the students' progress to the public school usually twice a year.

Both legally registered homeschool students and non-school students may receive a Junior High Diploma, allowing them to be admitted to the High School Entrance exam.

Options for Foreign Passport-holders

Traditional Chinese Schools. Children who enter Taiwan on a foreign passport usually may attend any public school free. (After all, if you live in Taiwan, you're also a taxpayer! And, therefore, your taxes help support the public schools whether your children attend them or not.) Children entering on foreign passports may also attend any traditional Chinese private school, provided they are willing and able to pay the tuition. However, foreign parents who are contemplating enrolling their child in any traditional Chinese school, whether public or private, should consider several factors:

• their child's age and his or her ability to handle Chinese as the language of instruction at the grade level he or she would be entering;
• the Chinese system's emphasis on rote memorization in preparation for tests;
• the Chinese system's lack of emphasis on fostering independent learning and thinking skills;
• cultural differences regarding what is considered acceptable behavior that may influence a foreign child's formation and character development in ways possibly deemed unacceptable by his or her parents;
• slower first language development due to following a Chinese-only curriculum;
• use of corporeal punishment (although perhaps less frequently than in years past.)

On the positive side, when compared to school learning environments in western countries, one should take note that schools in Taiwan have far less trouble with drugs and violence, and have no gun violence. Furthermore, students typically display much greater respect toward their teachers.

International Schools use English or another foreign language as the language of instruction, follow a standard curriculum of the country in which they are accredited, usually provide excellent facilities and well-trained and experienced teachers. However, they are also typically quite expensive, because international schools incur high costs in the process of providing the kind of educational learning environment that many foreign families expect. These costs may include construction and maintenance of state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, offering foreign teachers high enough salaries to attract them to come to Taiwan, providing the teachers with paid housing, paid airfare to and from their home country, paid medical insurance, and tuition-free attendance for the teachers’ children. All these expenses must be covered by the tuition and fees paid by the families of the regular students. As a result of these high costs, international schools end up mainly serving the children of international business personnel whose companies can afford to pick up the expensive tuition tab, and affluent Taiwanese families. (To compare the fees of such schools, click on the International Schools link.)

Non-schools / Alternative Schools, mentioned above, provide a second alternative to the traditional Chinese schools. These also use Chinese as the language of instruction, but in some cases may be more accommodating to English-speaking or bilingual students. Usually, these schools will be much less expensive than the international schools and at par or less expensive than most of the Chinese private schools. Unfortunately, at present, there are not very many such alternative-schools in existence. (For more information, please click on the Alternative Schools link. Those unable to read Chinese should be advised that their web sites, in most cases, will be in Chinese only.)

Homeschooling provides a third educational option to foreign passport-holders, and one that is even more viable than for many Taiwanese because foreigners are basically free to follow any educational method or philosophy that they like. Possible methods include parents doing all the teaching in their home, using an internet-based or other distance-learning program, group homeschooling with other ex-pat families, participating with Taiwanese homeschool support groups, or delegating some of the teaching to tutors or other teachers. One big advantage to homeschooling is the fact that a student does not have to follow the rigid traditional age-grade lockstep system found in both the traditional Chinese schools as well as in the international schools. This means that if a student can learn faster and enter high school and graduate earlier, then he or she may start college earlier. For more information on how to start high school early, please see the section below entitled American High School Diplomas by Distance Learning.

Possible Options for Junior High Graduates

Because Taiwanese students are presently only required to attend school through junior high school, junior high graduates have other possible educational options. However, some of these options are not necessarily suitable for all students. For example, if a student simply doesn’t like to study and has great difficulty in learning even basic English, then the following options are probably not suitable for him or her. However, if a student knows how to learn well on his or her own, and desires to learn English well, then he/she and his/her parents may want to consider seriously the following options.

American High School Diplomas by Distance Learning have been earned by hundreds of thousands of students from around the world, providing them with a convenient way to graduate from high school and prepare to study at American colleges and universities. Most are much cheaper than attending either an international school or a private high school in Taiwan. Distance-learning high school diploma programs vary in format. Some are mainly internet-based, some utilize both the internet and printed materials, and at least one is based entirely on printed materials. A growing number are attached to universities, which means it is now possible to earn a high school diploma from a recognized American university. These university-based distance-learning high schools also offer a number of dual credit courses in which qualified students may simultaneously earn both high school and university credit for the same course. Taking dual-credit courses provides high school students with the opportunity to start earning college credits even before they’ve finished high school, and even before they’ve left home! [For links to these schools, please click on the American Distance-Learning High Schools link.]

Furthermore, thousands of these students have been ESL students. [Please see my article How My ESL Daughter Went to College in the USA at 16.] If an ESL student’s English level is high enough, it may be possible for him or her to follow such a distance learning program from home. For students whose English level is lacking, or who need extra help, please continue reading to discover other possible options.

Tutoring for ESL Distance-Learning High School Students. There are several ways for students who need extra help to get the help that they need. One way is to for their parents to hire tutors for specific subjects and who come to their home once on twice a week as needed. For our children, we hired Taiwanese college math and science majors who could easily read and understand our children’s American high school math and science texts books, and then explain to them in Chinese anything that they didn’t understand. This method worked extremely well for us. I assumed responsibility for helping them with basically everything else which mainly consisted of English and Social Studies. If neither of the parents is capable of tutoring in English, then they will need to find an English tutor.

Another way is for parents to form or join a support group with other homeschool and distance-learning families and then share with each other the various talents of group members. If one parent is capable of teaching math, another science, and another English, then they may help each other. If there is a subject that no one is qualified to tutor students in, then the group could hire a tutor and share the cost accordingly.

A third way is to send the student to an English language school or study center that offers tutoring or supervision for distance-learning students. The advantage of this approach is that the student has a place to go every day, and there is an experienced educator present to supervise his learning program. For a list of recommended programs, please click on the Tutoring link.