I just heard that next year Taiwan will be offering public high school for free. Is that true?
I also was told by a number of Taiwanese students that in Taiwan the public high schools are better than the private ones. Is that true?
Thanks in advance.
It would be interesting to know more about this.
I hope at some point to have learnt enough chinese where this sort of things wont be so difficult to find out. (:
Yes, public high schools, like universities, are much better than private ones. Kids stay up all night, drink lots of coffee and probably snort various substances throughout elementary and middle school so they have a chance of getting into a get into a “good” public school. Some form of school will also be free starting next year, if I remember correctly.
I thought the bigger issue was not specifically that public high school would be free, but that students would be guaranteed education through high school and not just junior high as it is now. It does no good to make public high school free if no more people can get into them, unless they plan to go on a building binge soon and put private schools out of business.
I think the drop in the number of students + the plethora of pt teacher slaves allows Senior high schools the opportunity to take anyone.
Principals need students to justify all the money they want to spend on silly things.
P/T teacher slaves need jobs and schools want the flexibility to fire and hire people as they see fit.
The MOE wants a firmer grip on and extinction of private schools. The more schools under their control the more power they have over more people.
I don’t expect to see much change beyond the private gangster high schools’ student base possibly drying up. The problem comes when all those academically unprepared students are then benignly ignored by their public school just like they were with their private one.
I asked at school yesterday, and a teacher told me there is currently discussion about making Senior High School free from 2014. They are also still contemplating how to make the changes from transition from Junior High to Senior High. That is, they are still debating whether to get rid of the exam that is currently taken to decide placement in public schools.
Traditionally, students take an exam at the end of Junior High and scores determine whether they can get into the public school of their choice. Private schools “take up the slack.” Private school is more expensive than public, but children in low income families are eligible for subsidies.
There is discussion on exactly how they will decide who goes where if they take out the exam component, but as far as I know, nothing has been decided yet.