The latest batch of teachers certified by the Ministry of Education to instruct compulsory and elective courses in Southeast Asian languages at local elementary and high schools was accredited Aug. 16 in southern Taiwan’s Chiayi County.

Comprising 43 teachers from new immigrant families, the group will be on the frontline of Ministry of Education efforts implementing President Tsai Ing-wen’s New Southbound Policy—a farsighted initiative promoting closer ties with countries in South and Southeast Asia, as well as Australia and New Zealand, across such fields as business, culture, education and tourism. To date, a total of 136 teachers have completed the certification program nationwide.

Launched in July by the MOE’s K-12 Education Administration, the certification program requires all applicants to first complete training offered by either the National Immigration Agency under the Ministry of the Interior, local municipalities or nongovernmental organizations.

The MOE undertaking is also in accordance with new curriculum guidelines for elementary, junior and senior high schools to offer classes in Southeast Asian languages, as well as Hakka, Holo and indigenous dialects. Set for implementation in 2018, the guidelines are under review by a council including student representatives of Southeast Asian descent.

One of the representatives is Liu Chien-ping, a political science student at Taipei City-based Soochow University whose mother comes from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

“The responsibility for educating children of new immigrant families in the language spoken by a parent at home should be shared by the state,” Liu said. “Training teachers qualified to carry out this task must be an important consideration in education policymaking.”

MOE statistics show that 123,086 students at elementary and junior high schools in Taiwan proper and its outlying islands had parents from Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia, in order of pupil numbers, during the 2015 academic year, representing 6.2 percent of the national total. These students are seen as essential in building the talent pool called for under the New Southbound Policy. (KTJ-E)

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