The Executive Director of the European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan (ECCT), Freddie Höglund with his team visited the Ministry of Education (MOE) on 17 January and met with the Political Deputy Minister Fan Sun-Lu, to exchange opinions and concepts of the Bilingual Education Policy and other related issues. Topics include relaxing related laws, diversified language learning tools, improving Taiwan citizens’s English proficiency, bilingualizing open public information, cultivating English communication skills of government officials, further enhancing Taiwan’s international competitiveness, attracting more multinational companies to invest in Taiwan.

The Executive Yuan has announced the policy titled “Blueprint for Developing Taiwan into a Bilingual Nation by 2030” on 6 December, 2018. According to this policy, the Ministry of Education proposed “Taiwan’s Bilingual Country Project”, and proposed working towards the goals of “Implementing a Full-Scale Bilingual Structure of Taiwan’s Educational System; Cultivating Bilingual Talents to Bring Taiwan to the World.” To achieve these goals, five main strategies are being carried out:“Accelerating the daily usage of teaching methods”, “Expanding the scale of recruitment for enhancing human resources”, “Individualizing learning cases through Information Technology”, “ Internationalizing the education system”, and “Relaxing current regulations to establish flexible measures.” By strengthening English listening and speaking abilities, promoting specific courses taught in English, and managing teachers’ English cultivation program, the Ministry of Education expects to achieve these goals of strengthening students’ ability on daily practices in English and their competitiveness in future workplaces. In addition, the MOE is carrying out the measures of enriching the bilingual environment of the MOE and its new image of bilingualization.

The European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan (ECCT) was established in 1988,presented their first Position Papers in 1994, and published regularly every year thereafter in order to propose suggestions to both Taiwan’s commercial environment, as well as to propose issues related to education fields including Bilingual Education Policy.

The Ministry of Education and all departments are making efforts to establish relationships with private groups to exchange suggestions on education issues, to intertwine the needs of our society and education, and to demonstrate the determination of building up a bilingual country.