"Taiwan's education situation"

I am extremely honored to be invited to write for Collegia Vanguardia Educativa, a Mexican magazine. My article was to introduce Taiwan's education situation to the Mexican reader!

Here is the link to my article in the Magazine:

Taiwan's education situation


Here is my article,

Education Situation in Taiwan

Taiwan is a small island situated next to China. Taiwan is influenced greatly by Chinese culture and passes the same vision of the importance of excelling in academic activity to their young generation.

The current Taiwanese education process includes 2 years of preschool education, 6 years of elementary school, 3 years of junior high school, 3 years of senior high school or vocational education, 4 years of college or university, 1-4 years for master degree program and 2-7 years for a doctoral degree program. Taiwanese students usually go to school 8AM to 4PM, Monday to Friday.

Taiwan adopts the 9-year compulsory education system. Therefore 6-year elementary school and 3-year junior high school are mandatory. With the social consensus on high academic achievement, cram schools for all kinds of talents such as English, math, science, writing, music, art and dance class are very popular.

Children start going to cram school at the age of 6. Since most public schools end around 4PM, cram school will send team of teachers to pick up kids from school and take care of them until their parents are off work. Sometimes kids will stay in cram school until 9PM to finish and review their homework.

The amount of homework is not too overwhelming, it usually takes students 2-3hours to finish it. However, the amount of test is, most students have different quiz on different subject at any given day.

The average of total expenditure on 9-year compulsory education per public school student is 4,967 USD and extra 14,767 USD on cram school(s); per private school student is 37,067 USD and extra 553,267 USD on cram school(s).

After graduating from junior high school, students have to take the Basic Competence Test for Junior High School Students in order to apply for high school or vocational school. Every junior high school tries its best to deliver the highest entrance rate for entering the best high schools. Therefore curriculum, materials, teaching style hence became test oriented and memorize based. Sometimes “less important subjects”---such as physical education, art and other classes which are not included in the test--- will be shorten or replaced by “important subject”---such as Chinese, English, math, science, geography, history. Junior high school students on average will spend 14 hours on studying per day.

The same situation continues to high school since high school graduates will once again take College Entrance Examination to apply for college or university. Although with the high acceptance rate of 90.44% for college in 2011, the competition reminds intense. After all, everyone wants to be the best of the best.

For those who want to be a teacher in Taiwan, you will have to either graduate from teacher’s college, Normal University or take education courses at undergraduate level. After that they need to pass the Teacher Qualification Assessment for Kindergarten to Senior High School in order to teach.  

Under graduate and graduate education is more relax for Taiwanese students and allows them to have more free time to learn more about themselves.