Officials vgue on school language policy

Sat Jan 7 22:38:47 UTC 2006

>>From TaipeiTimes
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2006/01/06/2003287640

Officials vague on school policy

By Jean Lin
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Jan 06, 2006,Page 2

A day after confirming that the government was trying to devise means to ensure
that schools offering Chinese-language classes to foreigners were properly
regulated, officials yesterday were unable to provide specific details about
which schools, if any, might be affected.

They were also unable to specify which criteria would be used to ensure schools
met applicable regulations.

Ministry of Education (MOE) officials also said that the "list" of
ministry-approved schools it submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did
not include non-university affiliated language institutes, because these
schools did not fall under the responsibility of the ministry.

Such schools fall under the responsibility of local governments.

Officials said that the ministry hoped to establish criteria to regulate
language schools in discussions with the Taipei City Government's education
department and the ministry's department of social education before a final
decision is made at the end of March.

"There is evidently a lack of communication between government agencies, and we
hope to work together to better regulate these schools," said an official
surnamed Chen. "It is an ongoing process."

Government officials in Taiwan who are not official spokespeople often ask to be
identified only by their surnames.

Education ministry officials said that outdated social-education regulations
stipulated that language centers and cram schools could be set up to educate
Taiwanese nationals.

Technically, language schools, even large, well-established ones such as the
Taipei Language Institute (TLI), fall outside of legal requirements because
they teach foreign students, officials said.

The education ministry has therefore been trying to work with TLI and other
schools to make adjustments to abide by the current legal requirements as best
as possible, officials added.

Meanwhile, a TLI official, who also asked to be identified only by her surname,
Yeh, said that it would be easier for the education ministry to manage language
schools if they were university-affiliated, so the ministry had said that they
hoped TLI would make the necessary adjustments.

Yeh said that TLI is cooperating with a university in an effort to comply with
the ministry's policy, but she would not specify which university.

TLI has already sent documents verifying the legal adjustments to the ministry,
and was awaiting approval, she said.

She added that TLI was originally under the management of the education
ministry, but that at some point the ministry realized that there was no law
regulating language schools.

Yeh said that she was worried that unclear government policies might prompt many
foreigners to choose to go to China, rather than Taiwan, to study Mandarin.

She said that the language-learning environment in Taiwan was better than in
China, adding that students should not be forced to go to China because of
unclear policies.

A Bureau of Consular Affairs official surnamed Chou said that the point of the
government's effort was to crack down on foreigners who work illegally in the
country by pretending to study Chinese.