The Ministry of Education recently announced amendments to Articles 13 and 20 of the "Recruitment Assessment and Remuneration Measures for Contracted Personnel in Public Kindergarten" to adjust the remuneration of education and health care workers. However, some voices believe that teachers' salaries should not be compared, and even question why education and health care workers should receive the same amount due to the difficulty of the teacher selection examination. The National Early Childhood Education Industry Union (National Early Childhood Education Industry Union) said today that the efforts of teachers deserve recognition, and the professionalism and dedication of education and health workers should not be ignored. There should be a reasonable basis for the salary gap, and professionalism cannot be measured only by examination thresholds. Only by improving salary can we retain talents.
The whole kindergarten expresses that it respects the efforts of teachers to obtain qualifications and vacancies through teacher training, qualification testing and teacher selection examinations, and also recognizes that teacher selection examinations have a talent selection function. But is obtaining a formal teaching position sufficient to justify a lower salary for teaching staff? Specific institutional basis should still be proposed. Especially for education and health care workers who have obtained teacher certificates and have corresponding teacher training background and teaching qualifications, professional development should not be ignored due to different professional titles. The remuneration system should be reviewed back to actual work, professional qualifications and responsibilities.
In response to the argument that teaching and nursing staff are only responsible for assisting teaching and do not have to take on administrative or important duties, the entire kindergarten showed the front-line work in the 115th school year survey in Kaohsiung. Among the 256 "mainly responsible business scope" responses, 63.3% were mainly responsible for teaching and occasionally supporting administration. Among them, 28.1% were responsible for mixed-age classes for 3 to 5 years old, and 35.2% were responsible for special classes for 2-year-olds; 19.9% were mainly responsible for administration and occasionally assisting with joining classes; another 16.8% adopted teaching and administrative division of labor at different times; 14.5% said they had a part-time kindergarten director, and 85.5% said they did not. In fact, the work styles of education and health care workers are diverse. Some are mainly engaged in teaching, while others are responsible for administration or part-time as kindergarten directors.
In addition, Quan You Chan believes that examinations can be used as a basis for obtaining qualifications or filling job vacancies, but should not be the only criterion for determining who is more valuable in different positions. To establish a disparity in treatment, a reasonable link to job content, qualifications and responsibilities should be demonstrated.
Quanzhen also mentioned that the salary and working conditions of public early childhood education and care workers directly affect the attractiveness of the job vacancies. At present, it is difficult to recruit some acting education and child care workers, and the situation in rural areas is particularly severe. Recruitment difficulties do not mean that the work is unimportant, but it is a reminder that the system must improve. At this stage, the selection and admission scores for teaching and nursing staff are relatively low, which further illustrates that the job vacancies offer poor remuneration, are unattractive, and have relatively few competitors. When the remuneration and working environment are improved and job vacancies become more attractive, there will naturally be opportunities to attract more talents in the future, making the position of education and health care worker a worthy and more competitive job.
The whole industry calls on us to stop denying the professionalism and dedication of our peers based on differences in examination thresholds, job status or qualifications. Teachers and caregivers should cooperate with each other and not belittle their peers to maintain their own value. In the future, we will continue to fight for the reasonable treatment of public preschool education and childcare workers and the labor rights of non-profit, quasi-public kindergartens and public preschool teachers, and promote the improvement of the overall preschool education environment.
