In order to express support for grassroots teachers, the Democratic Progressive Party’s Hsinchu mayor candidate Zhuang Jingcheng and the party’s parliamentary candidates held a discussion with the “Hsinchu City Teachers Association” and jointly signed a commitment letter on education policies. Zhuang Jingcheng pointed out that Hsinchu City’s education funding accounts for about 34% of the city’s annual budget. He promised that if he is elected mayor in the future, he will gradually increase it to 40% of the total annual budget. He will also cooperate with companies in the Hsinchu Science Park to establish an exclusive “education fund” so that education reform will not only stop at policy planning, but also be transformed into manpower and resources that schools actually need.
Zhuang Jingcheng said that the eight major education policy demands have many common directions with the education policies he proposed previously. Taking special education and tutoring support as an example, front-line teachers need more professional manpower and resources to help promote inclusive education. Zhuang Jingcheng said that he advocates promoting the professionalization of special education psychological evaluation, setting the assessment fee at 2,000 yuan per case, special education teachers receiving an additional salary of up to 5,000 yuan per month based on their seniority, and improving the treatment and manpower allocation of special education assistants so that children with special needs can receive appropriate care and reduce the burden on front-line teachers.
In addition, the rent and commodity prices in Hsinchu City are relatively high, and teacher recruitment and retention face considerable challenges. To this end, Zhuang Jingcheng proposed the "Four Arrows for Teacher Retention", including a monthly rental subsidy of NT$5,000 for the first three years of teaching as a new teacher, a long-term bonus of NT$50,000 to NT$300,000 every five years, as well as additional tutor fees and administrative responsibilities. Comprehensive improvements in remuneration from initial appointment, long-term appointment, tutoring to administration will make outstanding teachers willing to come to Hsinchu and stay.
Zhuang Jingcheng said that in addition to increasing remuneration, it is also necessary to truly reduce the workload of teachers. He proposed the "Five Arrows of Stress Reduction in Education", covering class stress reduction, administrative stress reduction, psychological stress reduction, special education stress reduction and controversy stress reduction, and gradually promoted the goal of 25 students per class in elementary schools, 28 students in junior high schools, and 33 students in high schools, with the addition of additional classes and adjustments to teacher posts. At the same time, an education administrative support center will be set up in the Education Department, with 1 to 2 dedicated administrative personnel outside the establishment based on the size of the school, and an AI administrative integration platform will be introduced. The city government will assist in handling procurement, engineering and administrative reporting, allowing teachers to spend more time on teaching and students.
Zhuang Jingcheng pointed out that campus safety, parent-teacher conflicts and teachers’ mental health also require substantial support from the city government. In the future, we will gradually expand the full-time school security manpower in elementary schools, promote a three-level diversion mechanism for campus incidents, and reduce the pressure on front-line teachers facing campus disputes through real-time coordination, professional mediation, and school meetings. In addition, teachers will also be provided with 6 basic psychological consultations per year, which can be extended for 6 more times after evaluation, and each subsidy will be increased to 2,000 yuan. The city will also formulate consistent offline rights guidelines to protect teachers’ rest time and labor rights after get off work.
