Ceremony to Launch Preparatory Office of National Academy for Educational Research -Ministry of Education Republic of China (Taiwan)

Ceremony to Launch Preparatory Office of National Academy for Educational Research

Date: 2007-09-20

Ceremony to Launch Preparatory Office of National Academy for Educational Research

In order for the Preparatory Office of the National Academy for Educational Research to focus on the study of original educational issues and a permanent educational think tank for the nation, a ceremony was held at 9 a.m. on September 11 to inaugurate the Office. The ceremony was jointly presided over by Administrative Deputy Minister Wu Tsai-sun and Office Head He Fu-tian, who expressed his wish for the Office to tackle the country's major educational issues, consolidate educational resources, find new research directions, reform curricula and teaching methods and provide suggestions and proposals in an effort to raise the educational administration's decision-making quality and produce more distinguished individuals.

Deputy Minister Wu said at the ceremony, "It takes ten years to grow trees and a hundred years to educate people." Education is a long-term, continuous task whose unique nature makes it difficult to produce results in a short period. At a time when education is available to everyone, higher standards are required in terms of teaching materials and methods, testing of students and evaluation of their performance. The founding of the Academy will provide an objective research direction for various areas of education with the results to be used by decision makers as reference. Despite a shortage of manpower, the Office managed to set up a database to track Taiwan's education in the long run and a database to evaluate students' performance, evaluate qualifications of teachers across the nation and assess educational processes. Deputy Minister Wu expressed his gratitude and admiration for the Office's accomplishments.

The Office was established on May 8, 2000. On July 15, 2002, the Elementary Schoolteachers' Workshop in Taiwan Province was included in the Academy. In response to Taiwan's educational developments and the public's growing demand for an educational research institution, the Ministry of Education in 2006 began making plans to include the Secondary Schoolteachers' Workshop in Taiwan Province within the Office. The plans have been approved by the Executive Yuan. The revision of the rules governing the organization were announced on August 24, 2007 and took effect on August 26 of the same year.

The Office is responsible for tasks including developing curricula and training individuals to become teachers. In addition to administrative, accounting and personnel departments for handling general affairs, the Office has an Institute for Research on Curriculua and Teaching, an Institute for Research on Testing and Evaluation, an Institute for Research on Educational Policy and Systems, a Center for Development of Human Resources in Education and a Center for Development of Instructional Materials.

The government's goal is for the Academy to eventually become an administrative juridicial person. The Draft Plan for the Establishment of the National Academy for Educational Research was submitted to the Legislative Yuan for consideration on March 7, 2005, with related consolidation and organizational work underway according to plan.