Decentralization and Educational Governance in Taiwan.

Abstract

In the past few decades, education reforms have caused a remarkable change in Taiwan’s educational organization, system and power structure. The main element in these education reforms has been the decentralization of Taiwan’s education, i.e. easing government control over textbooks, empowering local education authorities, schools and teachers, providing educational vouchers for private senior vocational high schools and public and private kindergartens, and freeing the education market. The process of Taiwan’s education decentralization includes two main stages. The first stage was from 1987 to 1993. Its main purposes were to remove the “Greater China” political ideology from textbooks in order to establish the identity of Taiwan (in other words, to develop Taiwan consciousness), to allow the private sector to produce textbooks and to enhance the autonomy of universities, such they would be allowed to control the spending of their own money and also be responsible for raising money themselves through the so-called “University Affairs Foundation”. The second stage began in 1994 and continues to date. The main aims of this stage are to empower the teachers, schools at all levels and local educational authorities, and to enrich them with autonomy, to establish a local division of the central educational authority, to reform the college and university entrance system, and to pluralize the initial teacher training system.