Does anyone know what is the youngest age students are legally allowed to be taught English by western teachers? I believe it is 6 (6 from date of birth not date of conception/CNY).
Thanks,
Tom Thorne.
what are you talking about? I didn’t know there was a minimun age when a child can be taught by a non-taiwanese teacher. I’m sure there’s no such thing. If that was the case, then it would illegal for us to interact or talk with children below 6. nonsense.
Thanks for the reply. I was always under the impression that really young kids aren’t allowed to be taught by western teachers. Looks like I must be wrong.
I taught 4 and 5 year-olds (and maybe some younger than that) in a montessori school when I first arrived. They got me a visa and I believed it was legal.
[quote=“http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2003/09/06/2003066727”]
The Ministry of Education has recently opted to ban all pre-schools from teaching English beginning in 2005. The logic behind this move is to standardize the language curriculum under which English and other foreign languages can only be taught starting from the third grade and to give top priority to learning the mother tongues, followed by Mandarin and then foreign languages.[/quote]
I did find this news article in the Taipei Times. I don’t know for sure if or where this regulation exists, as nothing like it seems to be on the MOE website. Such a policy for kindergartens would certainly preclude English teachers, whether they were foreign or not.
Thank you very much for this guys. My wife and I have just started our own school and we have had requests from adults to teach their under 6’s. I also haven’t been able to find any clear-cut regulations regarding this, but my old employer used to refuse them. I think I’m going to have to play safe and turn them down.
You could always give the MOE a call to ask their current policy.
Teaching under 6’s is a good market because it can be done in the morning when everyone else is at school or work.
Why would you turn them down? 
No offense, but it would seem good business sense to tap into the under 6’s, as a potential future client base.
Many kindies have classes {for kids as young as 3} taught (translation:minded, & entertained) by foreigners.
As twocs noted, make some inquiries.
And then find that murky grey area, and engage…
The requirements for buxiban’s is that you cannot have students under the age of 6. This means that all students should be of minimum first grade of elementary school age. Therefore this excludes all children that are in kindergarten or under 6 yrs old from attending buxiban classes for English.
Our school policy, officially, was that we did not accept children under the age of 6. If people called on the phone, that was the situation, unless they were known to us. The reality was that we had about 100 students of kindergarten age being dropped off by kindergarten buses. We only sourced from 2 kindergartens in town.
The official rules are there, really, but who follows them?
Thanks Bassman. That ties in with what I thought were the official regulations.
You will need to consider this when you apply for your school license. Unless you are going to claim all under-6’s will be taught in Chinese by Taiwanese teachers, you cannot legally register your school…
This, of course from the standpoint of someone who has taught in schools with a kindergarten program being run under these (false) pretenses, complete with a fake Taiwanese principal sitting at the front desk doing nothing and Chinese teachers translating our lesson plans into Chinese.
Otherwise you will have to license yourself as a buxiban for kids aged 6 and up and have a back door to sneak your foreign kindy teachers out of. Make sure your signs are bilingual to claim that both your buxiban and kindy uses the same facilities and have the little kids’ names in both English and Chinese (so you can switch them out) with some bopomofo cards lying around in case you get a visit from the MOE.
Or just don’t risk it.
As far as the youngest age, my multi-aged kindy class, two years ago, included a 2-1/2-year-old boy who was dropped off at school on the day of his half-birthday. He would have come sooner, but the principal put her foot down about him needing to be at least 2-1/2 years old.
I’m not going to risk it. The only westerner in a small town decides to break the rules like everyone else? I wouldn’t fancy my chances.