Short answer:
If
(1) the company isn’t tricking you (or itself) in any way,
and
(2) you have the right qualifications to teach kindergarten students, or you get it in writing from the local education department that your exact situation is just buxiban teaching,
you should be okay.
(Disclaimer: this is not legal advice.) 
Quick question: what website did your friend look at?
Long answer:
In case anyone reading this wants to know what the big deal is about foreigners teaching in kindergartens and doesn’t want to go through the 25-page thread titled “Kindergarten Laws” (which contains almost no solid information), [b]the nucleus of the problem, legally speaking, is Article 12, Paragraph 2 of the Early Childhood Education and Care Act (which I’ll call the ECECA):
Preschool educare curriculum framework and educare service implementation regulations shall be stipulated by the central competent authority.
[/b]
(Educare or 教保 is an official abbreviation for education and care or 教育及照顧.)
That means the Ministry of Education or its local equivalent (education department of any city/county government) can decide what can and can’t be taught in a kindergarten. The penalty for violating this is listed in Article 52:
Preschools about which any of the following statements is true shall be ordered to take corrective actions by a specified date and failure to take corrective actions by the specified date shall result in the responsible persons of the preschool being fined not less than 3,000 New Taiwan Dollars and no more than 30,000 New Taiwan Dollars consecutively per violation. Serious violations or failure to take corrective actions after 3 fines may result in the reduction of number of children enrolled, the suspension of enrollment for 6 months to one year, suspension of preschool operations for 1 to 3 years, or the revocation of establishment registration: […]
2. Those that violate Paragraph 2 of Article 12 regarding mandatory or prohibitive regulations on educare activities and healthcare. […]
The specific prohibition is of teaching English, not foreigners teaching English or foreigners doing any other kind of work in a kindergarten. The document that spells it out, 幼兒園教保服務實施準則 (kindergarten educare implementation guidelines (or criteria, standards, rules, etc.)), is only available in Chinese. Article 13:
幼兒園實施教保活動課程,應依下列規定為之:
一、每學期應至少召開一次全園性教保活動課程發展會議。
二、訂定行事曆、作息計畫及課程計畫。
三、落實健康教育、生命教育、安全教育、品德教育及性別平等教育。
四、以統整方式實施,不得採分科方式進行。
五、以自行發展為原則,並應自幼兒生活經驗及在地生活環境中選材。
六、有選用輔助教材之必要時,其內容應符合幼兒園教保活動課程大綱之精神。
七、不得採全日、半日或分科之外語教學。
八、不得進行以精熟為目的之讀、寫、算教學。
My translation:
A kindergarten should implement an educare activity curriculum in accordance with the following rules:
1, A kindergarten-wide educare curriculum development meeting should be held at least once every semester.
2, The calendar of events should be fixed, including plans for work and rest periods as well as plans for the curriculum.
3, Health education, life education, safety education, moral education, and gender equality education should be included.
4, The curriculum should be implemented in a unified manner, not separately by individual departments.
5, For the principle of self-development, [teaching] materials should be selected according to children’s life experiences and the local environment.
6, When it is necessary to select supplementary teaching materials, the contents should be consistent with the spirit of the curriculum.
7, The teaching of foreign languages is not permitted, whether whole-day, half-day, or by department [or division].
8, Teaching with the aim of mastering reading, writing, or arithmetic is not permitted.
(Someone else already posted this before, somewhere. Maybe a sticky is needed.)
Some Forumosans have suggested English classes of no more than a certain number of minutes per day are allowed. I think Subparagraph 7 was written with the intention of snuffing out English classes completely. (Personally, I agree with the many experts who consider L2 teaching in kindergartens to be useful and appropriate, and I would also agree with the regulations if they included foreign languages in Subparagraph 8 instead of 7.)
As for the company that’s offered you a job teaching “non-kindergarten kindergarten”, it sounds like the same kind of loophole the “non-buxiban buxibans” try to exploit. As explained in another thread, the local government has the authority to specify exactly what a buxiban is and to take action against any buxiban or “similar” entity within its jurisdiction (city/county).
The definition of a kindergarten is found in Article 2 of the ECECA:
[i]本法用詞,定義如下:
一、幼兒:指二歲以上至入國民小學前之人。
二、幼兒園:指對幼兒提供教育及照顧服務(以下簡稱教保服務)之機構。
Terms used in the Act are defined as follows:
- “Young children” (hereinafter referred to as “children”) means children over the age of 2 and prior to entering elementary school.
- “Preschools” means institutions that provide education and care services (hereinafter referred to as “educare services”) to young children.
[/i]
That’s the official tranlsation. What’s translated as “preschools” is 幼兒園 (youeryuan) in the original version, usually translated as “kindergartens”. (There are at least two other terms to consider: 安親班 anqinban and 幼稚園 youzhiyuan. I don’t know what legal distinction there is, if any, but it’s probably also up to the local education department.) We have the typical confusion here about inclusive or non-inclusive numbers. The safe reading of “二歲以上” is “age 2 or above”. When an age number is specified in a law, it means the “international age” not the “Chinese age”, according to Article 124 of the Civil Code:
The age of a person is counted from his birthday.
If the month and the day of birth of a person are impossible to ascertain, he is presumed to have been born on the first day of July. If the month is known and the day is impossible to ascertain, he is presumed to have been born on the fifteenth day of the said month.
The proposed amendment mentioned in the news article you cited didn’t pass, so the Supplementary Education Act doesn’t address the issue directly. (The other law mentioned, the _____, doesn’t specifically address the issue but does support the general idea of Article 13 of the curriculum guidelines.) If the amendment had passed, it would have created a unified national policy that some local governments have already adopted. [b]For example, look at Article 17 of Taipei City’s buxiban regulations (臺北市短期補習班管理規則 ):
補習班招收六歲以下兒童時,並應依兒童及少年福利相關法規辦理。 [/b]
My tranlsation:
If a buxiban is open for enrollment to children of age 6 or below [same ambiguity as above], it must comply with the relevant laws and regulations on child and youth welfare.
This presumably means they consider the ECECA applicable, and the same department (education) has authority over both kindergartens and buxibans as provided for in both of the relevant Acts (ECECA and Supplentary Education). Additionally, Article 3 of the ECECA states:
Any matter in the Act may involve duties of various industry competent authorities and they shall cooperate in the matter.
So even if you manage to placate the education department you could still face trouble from whatever the local version of the Ministry of Health & Welfare is called.
And even if you successfully play the “non-buxiban” card, you will have a hard time playing the “non-kindergarten” card because the ECECA also has the following penalties:
Article 47: up to $300,000 (repeatedly in case of refusal to comply) (plus name-and-shame) for “enrolling children and conducting educare services without approval” or failing to register properly.
There’s more. I haven’t checked every city’s buxiban regulations, but Article 25 of the Supplementary Education Act also allows penalties for violating “other pertinent acts and regulations”:
[i]In the event that a short-term tutorial school is poorly managed, violates this Act or other pertinent acts and regulations, or violates the conditions of its establishment permit, the competent educational authority in the special municipality, county, or county-level city where the problem occurs may render any of the following dispositions, as the facts of the case merit:
- issue an official reprimand;
- order the school to take corrective action within a specified time period;
- order a halt to recruitment of students; and/or
- revoke the school’s accreditation.
[/i]
If a local government argues that the ECECA is “pertinent” to buxibans despite not having declared its pertinence in writing, I think you would have a very hard time trying to argue about it.
The “conditions of its establishment permit” refers to the fact that (at least in Taipei) a buxiban needs to get government approval for every subject it wants to teach. There’s also the inconvenient fact of Article 18, Paragraph 2 of the Company Act:
A company may conduct any business that is not prohibited or restricted by the laws and regulations, except for those requiring special approvals which shall be explicitly described in the Articles of Incorporation of the company.
A few similar articles in the Business Registration Act also seem to be relevant.
Of course, all of the above assumes that “you” are running the show. In most cases it’s actually the company (or the company’s “responsible person”) who bears the legal burden, not a mere teacher. There are some claims in the “Kindergarten Laws” thread that teachers have been deported specifically for teaching English to kindergarten kids, but I suspect that every case in which a foreigner who taught in a kindergarten was deported was a case of the work permit/ARC having the wrong company name/address – it was just perceived as a matter of “working in a kindergarten”.
The theory resulting from an understanding of the work permit/ARC problem is that anyone with open work rights (APRC, JFRV, WHV, etc.) is safe from the law and free to work in a kindergarten, because only the kindergarten (or its “responsible person”) is liable for the violation of curriculum regulations. There is however one caveat in Article 49 of the ECECA:
[b]Perpetrator of Paragraphs 3 and 4 of Article 15 shall be subject to a fine of not less than 6,000 New Taiwan Dollars and not more than 30,000 New Taiwan Dollars, and may be fined consecutively per violation.
That refers to these two acts:
Personnel without educare certificates or credentials shall not be allowed to work as preschool educators.
Preschool educators shall be prohibited to offer or lend educare certificates or credential to others.
So if they deem your qualifications insufficient, you can be fined.[/b] (There was also a report in a thread – not the “Kindergarten Laws” thread – that a foreigner with open work rights was fined something like $60 by the labor department. I don’t know what the basis of that would be.)
Some Forumosans have made a completely unsubstantiated claim that only credentials issued in Taiwan are acceptable for kindergarten teachers. The ECECA Articles 20 to 22 covers teacher qualifications:
[i]Article 20:
The requirements for the Preschool teacher’s qualifications shall be in accordance with the Teacher Education Law. These are the same qualifications of kindergarten teachers in the Law prior to the amendment of the preschool teacher qualifications.
Article 21:
The qualified educare givers shall fulfill one of the following requirements, unless otherwise specified in the Act.
- Graduates of junior colleges or universities, or foreign colleges or universities certified by the Ministry of Education, which offer undergraduate, graduate, or degree programs majoring in early childhood education and care.
- Graduates of junior colleges or universities, or foreign colleges or universities certified by the Ministry of Education, which offer undergraduate, graduate, or degree programs, minor not relevant to early childhood education and care, and complete the courses in the early childhood education and care as minors or programs. Standards for recognition of undergraduate, graduate, or degree programs, and minors and credit courses described in the preceding Paragraph shall be stipulated by the central competent authority.
Article 22:
Unless otherwise stated in the Act, preschool assistants shall, at the minimum, be graduates from high school child care education programs or divisions in the Republic of China. The central competent authority shall stipulate standards for recognition of education programs or divisions as described in the preceding Paragraph.
[/i]
So the only localist requirement is for assistants who lack other qualifications. (I haven’t read the whole Teacher Education Law, but I doubt it has a blanket prohibition of foreign qualifications.) This does appear to make the standards for kindergarten teachers higher than for buxiban teachers, though the “assistant” clause sounds like a loophole that some will try to exploit. (As for foreigners being dangerous, Article 27 of the ECECA already forbids anyone with a dodgy background – criminal or medical – to work in a kindergarten. Background checks are not directly required for foreigners, and they’re not directly required for locals either. Personally I have no problem with background checks as long as the employer or the government bears the full cost, but telling a prospective employee to pay for it is something I find very insulting. They could at least make a condition like “we pay if you’re clean, you pay if you’re dirty.”)
The document someone cited from Tealit is a bit out of date but basically says the same as this page on the Workforce Development Agency’s website: wda.gov.tw/en/home.jsp?pagen … 1304230047
[i]Question: 7. Can cram schools assign foreign language teachers to teach at kindergarten or pre-school? Update Date:2009/05/26
Answer: The Ministry of Education and the Child Welfare Bureau, Ministry of the Interior have homologated that it is illegal for cram schools to subcontract a foreign language teacher to teach foreign language in kindergartens or pre-schools. The employer will violate the Employment Service Act if conduct such behavior. A cram school can however sign a subcontract with individuals or organizations (not including cram schools, kindergartens, pre-schools and school) and assign the foreign language teachers employed to teach for the aforementioned individuals or organizations.
[/i]
(NB the Child Welfare Bureau is now the Social and Family Affairs Administration and belongs to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.)
This is related to another question: wda.gov.tw/en/home.jsp?pagen … 1412040005
[i]Question: Can cram schools assign foreign language teachers to work for another cram schools owned by the same employer? Update Date: 2014/12/04
Answer: According to Article 46.1.4 of the Employment Service Act, the foreign language teachers are under the employment of ‘legally registered short term cram schools’, not the ‘person’who established the cram school; the address of the employment has been written on the Work Permit as well. Also, another regulation stipulates that foreign language teacher shall teach at least 14 hours weekly in the first cram school, and at least 6 hours weekly for the second one on. So, the Ministry of Labor grant permits to the number of teachers employable by any registered cram school based on its weekly teaching hours and numbers of classrooms approved for the concerned language. Therefore, to employ a foreign language teacher, a new Work Permit must be applied respectively by each and every registered cram school.
[/i]
Now this is a little confusing. On the one hand, buxibans (“cram school” in the WDA’s tranlsation or even “short-term class” in the Ministry of Justice’s translation of the Employment Service Act, but the original is always 補習班 buxiban or 短期補習班 short-term buxiban, which is the same thing) are allowed to subcontract classes to clients, i.e. send teachers to other locations. Presumably this is justified on the grounds that it doesn’t violate the Employment Service Act as long as the employment relationship is still between the teacher and the buxiban (unless the proposed law on labor dispatching gets passed and creates an employment relationship between the teacher and the client in some situations). On the other hand, subcontracting to other buxibans or to other schools including kindergartens is prohibited on the grounds that it violates the ESA. Notice how they don’t explain why this distinction is made. Maybe the passage of the labor dispatch law would help to clear this up.
(Confusingly, contracting or subcontracting is officially translated “hire of work” in the Civil Code, whereas normal employment is officially translated “hire of services”. A labor dispatch law is needed to deal with the increasingly common phenomenon of sham contracting, unless they amend the Civil Code.)
Article 43 of the ESA:
Unless otherwise specified in the Act, no foreign worker may engage in work within the Republic of China should his/her employer have not yet obtained a permit via application [therefor].
The “other” cases specified are of course APRC etc. The penalty for violating Article 43 is a fine of $30,000 to $150,000 and deportation, in accordance with Article 68.
The penalty for illegally employing a foreigner (Article 44, penalty in Article 63) starts at $150,000 and goes up to $1,200,000 plus 3 years of hard labor if there are repeated violations.
If an agent is involved in illegal employment of a foreigner (Article 45, penalty in Article 64) starts at $100,000 and goes up to the same maximum as for the employer if there are repeated violations. People who report any of them (illegal worker, illegal employer, or illegal agent) can receive rewards.
So as an employer with pre-elementary students, if you want to be safe, not only make sure all your paperwork is in order but also check with the education department and every other department that may have a say, or else you could be deemed an illegal “educare provider” and fined accordingly.
As a teacher, if you want to be safe, the most important thing is to make sure you’re really working for the company you think you’re working for (i.e. the name and address in all the documents match the reality). Don’t just take your employer’s word for it. Next, if you “provide educare” (in the local government’s opinion) to a pre-elementary student, make sure you have the right qualifications. Finally, even if you follow the law, you may lose your job if the company gets in trouble. As has been pointed out many times, there are countless overt kindergartens across Taiwan that make no real secret of their English classes, but the penalties are real and can be enforced at any time.
To find any national law or regulation, go to law.moj.gov.tw. Many are available in English, some only in Chinese. For any local regulation, go to the local government’s website. Usually the things you actually want to know are only in Chinese. Don’t put too much faith in the oral statements of anyone working in a government office; if it’s important, get it in writing.