TAIWAN-EDUCATION: Make or Break Exams Force Students to Cram

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yojana Sharma

TAIPEI, Feb 10 1997 (IPS) - Pauline, Ruth and Daisy are among the lucky ones. They have made it to Taipei First Municipal Girls School. Each year, some 30,000 girls sitting their 15+ exam put this school as first choice, but only 1,200 make it.

The gates will get narrower. In July more than 120,000 students around the country will sit the all-or-nothing Joint University Entrance Exam (JUEE) determined to enter the Taiwan National University (TNU). Only 50,000 are expected to pass. Some who fail may enrol in a ‘cram’ school for a year and try again.

And it is easy to see why competition for the First Municipal Girls School is so tough. Some 40 per cent of the TNU intake comes from this — and its equivalent boys school.

Even though Pauline, Ruth and Daisy are the nation’s academic elite, they say 40 out of 48 students in their class regularly attend outside cram schools in two or three times a week after school.

“We go to cram schools so that we can deal with exams,” says Pauline. “In class you understand the teacher’s explanation but in cram school you practise.”

Ruth says she “depends” on cram schools to keep up her high score.

The government estimates that more than a million students attend some 3,000 private profit-making cram schools or “bushiban” after school or during vacations — and that is a conservative estimate.

Three months of English tuition, of about four hours a week would cost around 350 dollars. Books and teaching materials can cost an additional 150 dollars. With more than one child taking several bushiban courses, cramming can make education expensive — even though the school system is free.

And cramming is not confined to the high school years.

“Even at Grade Five and Six (age 11 and 12) parents send their children to bushiban to make them start earlier,” says Candy Chiang, who teaches English at a private kindergarten. “The problem is parents compare when they find out that other parents are sending their children to bushiban earlier they get worried and do the same.”

Exam pressure is considered worst in Junior high school (12-15) when there are many subjects to learn. After 15, students choose between science and social science and drop some subjects.

Most crucially, it is at age 15 that the exam system filters off the top 30 per cent into academic education which prepares them for university. The rest must make do with vocational education, seen as a second rate option which often, unfairly, labels people as blue-collar workers.

The 30:70 divide between academic and vocational schooling was imposed by the government in the 1970s to meet the demand of the manufacturing sector for skilled manual workers. However in a society that values learning, many students are in vocational schools for the sole reason that they failed their 15+ exams.

This explains extreme pressure on 12-15 year olds to avoid such a fate.

Students like Pauline, Ruth and Daily spent their whole three years at junior high school preparing for the 15+ exams.

“At 15 you are tested on the books you studied in the first year of junior high. We had 44 books altogether to revise for the senior high school exam. It was hell,” says Daisy.

Private junior high schools are gaining in popularity because of a better teacher-student ratio and perception among parents that they are more successful in getting students into academic senior high schools. In reality many of these schools are nothing more than full-time crammers.

“We have to consider why we are driving students so hard and not allowing more than 30 per cent of students to be successful,” notes Dr Lee Yuan-tseh, president of Taipei’s prestigious research institution Academica Sinica, and chairman of the Council on Educational Reform which presented its two-year deliberations to president Lee Teng-Hui in late December.

“The other 70 per cent must be allowed to catch up and not completely neglected as they have been in the past.”

The vocational schools, unpopularity notwithstanding, are considered by many to be one of the successes of Taiwan, turning out well-skilled workers who easily find jobs. But, says Hung Hsiu- chu, a ruling party legislator and chairwoman of the Legislature’s Education Committee, this has been achieved at great cost to society, particularly at a time when aspirations have grown.

“In Taiwan, success depends on your degree rather than ability,” says Dr Lee. “If you are a BSc and another person holds a masters degree, no matter how you try there is no way even by retirement age that you will catch up with that masters holder. But we believe ability and not degrees should predominate.”

Significantly, only about 10 per cent of students who complete nine years of compulsory education at age 15 fail to continue their schooling, indicating a great demand for learning even from those who fail the 15+. After learning a trade in vocational schools many go on to technical colleges to build on their skills.

The government is now committed to helping those who “fell” into the vocational stream to rise through the academic ranks and reverse its policy as seeing human resources only as fodder to serve its industrial aims.

It is another two years before the students of Taipei First Municipal Girls School sit their university entrance examination. And some of them already admit to being apprehensive.

“Three or four days in a week I would say I do not get enough sleep,” says Nancy. “It is very common in Taiwan.”

The situation is very similar to the “exam hell” of Japan and South Korea but many insist it is worse because the gates are narrower.

“Less than 20 per cent of our young people will be admitted to four-year university courses. That’s low compared to 35 per cent in Japan and 30 per cent in South Korea,” says Dr Lee Yuan Tseh, a Nobel laureate in chemistry.

“Everyone in Taiwan aims for the best, the very best. I admire the spirit of our students to get a university degree. And I want to keep that spirit. The problem is there is only one university everyone will go to go to happily. If I can change perceptions so that there are five universities people are readily going to then I am changing a lot. The pressure will be released,” says Education Minister Dr Wu Jin.

At university, everyone agrees the pressure eases, but few enjoy their time there because the subject studied depends more on exam scores than on personal choice.

Educationalists hope that with the presentation of the Educational Reform Council document the pace of change may now quicken. In response to popular pressure the Council is pushing for the academic stream to be increased to 40 per cent, the vocational reduced to 60 per cent and ultimately to get rid of the 15+ exam altogether so that 12-15 year olds can get on with learning rather than cramming.