The Main Features and the Key Challenges of the Education System in Taiwan

Abstract

Taiwan has undergone radical innovation of its educational system in the wake of political liberalization and democratization, with a request for a change in the idea which diverts from ‘de-centralization’ to ‘individualization’. The reforms have led to two main features of pluralism and generalization of education in our current education system with a view to more equal and plural opportunities of education for students in Taiwan. Nevertheless, a number of reform tasks have been done in haste without discretion and have developed various problems with some deriving from the inherent educational system and some from the reform tasks themselves. The paper discusses three major educational reform concerns and the problems associated with these concerns including multilingual learning in elementary schools, overexpansion of higher education institutions and 12-year compulsory education.