Taipei mayoral candidate Shen Boyang released an education policy today (2nd), proposing four major directions: reducing stress on teachers, relieving stress with teachers, further improving the early childhood education environment, and supporting special education.
Shen Boyang said that by reducing class sizes, releasing regular teacher positions and reducing administrative burdens, outstanding teachers will be retained, and parent-teacher communication, campus safety and nutritious lunch packages will be improved so that teachers can focus on teaching and children can grow up with peace of mind.
The Beijing Municipal Education Bureau stated that many of the contents are consistent with the education policies promoted by the city government in recent years and have seen initial results, and it is happy to see Shen affirming the city government.
According to statistics, there are 44 acting teacher vacancies in Jeonbuk City on the first day of this year's school year, and the teacher shortage rate in junior high schools is the highest among the six cities.
Shen Boyang pointed out that the high cost of living, the pressure of teacher-teacher communication and the heavy administrative burden make it difficult for Taipei City to retain outstanding teachers. Although the Education Bureau adopts "over-hours" and substitute teaching emergency response, it may aggravate on-site pressure and fall into a vicious circle.
In addition, only one week into the school year, mass food poisoning and food waste KPI disputes occurred over nutritious lunches, causing teachers to become exhausted at the education site.
Shen Boyang said that the systemic difficulties in the education field must be improved from the four core aspects of "teacher pressure reduction", "teacher relief", "preschool education environment further improvement" and "special education support", while taking into account "student safety" and "free nutritious lunches with flexible packages" to create a more meaningful and warm educational environment.
He pointed out that the class size should be reduced and the burden on teachers should be reduced. It is planned to achieve the refined teaching goals of 24 students per class in elementary schools and 25 students in each class in junior high schools in the 117 school year. At the same time, formal teacher positions will be released to promote the reduction of students in elementary and middle schools without reducing teachers, optimize the allocation of teachers, and evaluate the increase of faculty bonuses to reduce the high cost of living in Taipei. The dual tutor system and tutor administrative assistants will also be piloted in elementary schools so that teachers can focus more on teaching.
In terms of preschool education environment, in the 2017 school year, the establishment target of 10 students per kindergarten class and 24 students per kindergarten class was achieved. For public kindergartens with small enrollments, the "full-time director system" and painless administration of education and care personnel were promoted, allowing frontline staff to have more time to take care of children and devote themselves to teaching.
Faced with the increasingly severe parent-teacher relationship, Shen Boyang proposed to establish a third-party diversion mechanism to avoid "small cases being dealt with in a big way". For minor cases, the "Teacher-Student Reconciliation Procedure" should be promoted for mediation and counseling. At the same time, the "Teacher Assistance Program (EAP)" should be expanded, the number of consultation bases should be increased and included in the Beijing Psychological Consultation Center to provide sufficient psychological support for front-line teachers.
Regarding nutritious lunches, it is proposed that the meal fee standard should establish a flexible adjustment mechanism that fluctuates with the price index, and retain the flexibility for parents to increase prices at their own expense, so as to avoid setting a ceiling for the quality of the meals. Food farmer education and Tokyo's experience should also be combined to introduce cooperation with local small farmers, implement nutrition education, and deepen the concept of health.
In terms of campus safety, it is proposed to implement the "Four Anti-drug Measures", including cutting off the source, upgrading life skills courses, introducing screening, brief treatment and referral for treatment (SBIRT) medical referral, and supplemented by the judiciary.
Shen Boyang said that special education often creates breakpoints due to low parental acceptance, insufficient family execution, excessive caregiving pressure, or unfriendly workplace systems. Therefore, the functions of family education centers should be expanded, workplace-friendly policies 2.0 should be upgraded, and free psychological consultation and parenting worry relief plans should be provided for those aged 15 to 45. The allocation of special education assistants should be re-examined and manpower should be increased to provide comprehensive support to families and teachers with special needs.
In addition to improving the front-line education environment, Shen Boyang also advocated that the city government should include universities as municipal partners, combine the Ministry of Education's USR plan, transform municipal needs into research and practical topics, gather the academic strength of universities, and brainstorm to create a new look for Taipei.
Huang Xiangxian, chairman of the National Agent and Substitute Teacher Industry Union, said bluntly that when he worked as an agent teacher in Taipei City 10 years ago, his salary was the best in Taiwan and attracted many young people to come to Taipei. However, the shortage of teachers began to show signs after the full-year recruitment in 2023, and agent teachers gradually moved to the central and southern areas. Although Jiang Wanan claimed to "help teachers reduce stress," not only did he not see an improvement in the agent teachers' salary, but he also started a retrogressive policy of free nutritious lunches this year.
Acting teachers are newcomers to the teaching community and are also the best force to fill the manpower in the education field. To have teachers, we must start by retaining acting teachers and giving them the opportunity to further their studies and become regular teachers. However, Jiang Wanan has never invited the acting teachers union to discuss relevant policies. He hopes that Taipei will have new opportunities and return to the leader in teacher welfare in Taiwan, with a teacher welfare system that Taipei City is proud of.
The Education Bureau of Bei City stated that Bei City has taken a multi-pronged approach from class size, administrative manpower and digital tools.
Public elementary schools will gradually reduce class sizes starting from the 113 school year, with a target of 25 students per class in the 120 school year; public junior high schools are expected to lower the upper limit of class sizes for seventh grade students to 29 students starting from the 116 school year, with a target of 26 students per class in the 119 school year.
Mayor Chiang announced the "Three Arrows of Educational Reform" in January this year, including providing monthly incentive bonuses of 1,000 to 3,000 yuan to school administrators, adding nearly 300 dedicated administrative personnel for primary and secondary schools, and increasing the number of free psychological consultations for teachers to 8 to 12 times per school year; and continuing to promote "Teacher Professional Development Space 2.0."
Administrative reduction and digital transformation have also been launched. Starting from 2026, AI tools such as Gemini will be purchased for use by school administrators, and customized "AI administrative assistant modules" will be developed to assist in handling repetitive administrative tasks.
The teacher-student ratio of the kindergarten has reached 24 students per class for 3 to 5-year-olds. In the 2015 school year, it expanded from a public kindergarten to a quasi-public kindergarten.
For the 2-year-old special class, we will continue to improve the early childhood education and care environment by taking into account the needs of kindergarten admissions and the workload of education and care personnel by adding new classes in public kindergartens, opening new kindergartens and adding classes in non-profit kindergartens, and optimizing the allocation of education and health care personnel.
We continue to increase special education resources, and the proportion of special education budget has increased to 13%, a record high.
The Education Bureau pointed out that from the 112 to 115 school years, a total of 144 classes and 344 teacher posts were added, and formal teachers and flexible support manpower were continued to be supplemented; the total service hours of special education assistants also increased from 730,000 hours in the 111 school year to 1.273 million hours in the 115 school year, continuing to strengthen the capacity of front-line support.
It also promotes free nutritious lunches for primary and secondary schools, establishes a price adjustment mechanism, checks necessary subsidy funds based on price indexes, and takes into account the quality of meals while maintaining the direction of parents not to increase prices; it saves families with children more than 10,000 yuan in meal expenses every year, and implements equality at the table.
In terms of food safety, the Education Bureau has hired an additional 45 nutritionists to strengthen school lunch, nutrition and food safety guidance. It has also established a standard operating procedure for emergency response to major food safety incidents. In the future, it will expand inspections to more than 120 times per year. It will strictly supervise catering manufacturers and implement penalties in accordance with the law and contracts to comprehensively monitor the health of students.
In addition, Taipei City has established a complete campus anti-drug network from prevention promotion, risk identification, screening to counseling and treatment. It has also pioneered the "through-treatment" service, which is jointly provided by psychologists, social workers and personal counselors with addiction treatment expertise.
In addition to providing individual consultation, family education and continuous follow-up for drug-related students, we also connect medical, social affairs, police and judicial resources according to the needs of the case, so that the anti-drug work not only stops at "detection", but also further provides follow-up counseling and accompanying recovery.
