Education minister dials down on ‘bilingual 2030’ goal

Taiwan’s new Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao has said the island’s ambitious goal towards becoming bilingual in English and Mandarin Chinese by 2030 would have to “slow down”, acknowledging there had been problems recruiting qualified teachers and university faculty members during recent years.

Cheng, former president of Taiwan’s National Sun Yat-sen University, was announced as education minister in April following Taiwan’s general election in January which saw William Lai of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) elected as the island’s president.

Lai, who was inaugurated on 20 May, was the party’s vice-president under the previous DPP government of president Tsai Ing-wen, a former academic, who announced the bilingual policy in 2018 and began to implement it in universities from 2021.

Cheng said in an interview with the Chinese language newspaper Liberty Times on 1 June that he would not halt the bilingual education policy as future generations would require English proficiency, but he remarked that it could not be easily achieved and would have to slow down.

“The bilingual policy cannot be achieved in a short time,” he said in the interview. “It may take 20 or 30 years; but if it is not implemented now, it will be implemented in 10 years and it will still take 20 or 30 years, so it is still a good thing to start,” he added.

The change is a roll-back for Lai, who supported the policy and initiated his own 10-year plan in 2014 to bring in English when he was mayor of the city of Tainan, and also pushed forward with English-language teaching at his own university while president of Taiwan’s National Sun Yat-sen University.

In 2021 several universities received special government funding for four years to move towards half of all undergraduate programmes, 70% of masters programmes and almost all doctoral programmes being taught in English as part of the bilingual policy. The second stage of the policy 2025-30 is due to begin which will require funding approval from Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan.

Criticism of the bilingual policy

The ruling DPP lost its majority in the Legislative Yuan during the January elections. “[This was] probably because the DPP government got less seats in the Legislative Yuan, it may face more difficulties to get the budget [for the bilingual policy],” explained Yi-Hsuan Irene Huang, a doctoral researcher at Bristol University in the United Kingdom, who is researching Taiwan’s higher education internationalisation, including English medium instruction (EMI) in universities.

“The [ministry’s] slowdown is probably because there have been so many critiques around this policy, not only from the political parties like the [opposition] Kuomintang and Taiwan People’s Party but also from wider society,” she told University World News.

The Kuomintang favours closer ties to mainland China and an emphasis on Mandarin Chinese. The TPP said in its campaign materials prior to the January elections that the DPP’s bilingual policy “lacked adequate planning for faculty and teaching materials, rendering it destined to fail”.

The party also described the 2030 timeline as “mere rhetoric, formality and slogans, further exacerbating urban-rural disparities”.

The main focus of criticism was teaching in schools, but universities note that this has a knock-on effect on English proficiency at university level.

The TPP said schools implementing bilingual programmes were 68% of schools in the capital Taipei, but outside Taipei it dropped sharply to around a third of schools in major cities such as Taoyuan, Taichung and Tainan and just 16% of schools in the port city of Kaohsiung.

Groups, such as the Taiwan Languages and Literacy Society, have argued for more resources for preserving or protecting local and indigenous languages. Additionally, civil society groups have campaigned to replace the bilingual policy that prioritises English with an “English-friendly multilingual policy” that also promotes local and indigenous languages.

Teachers pointed to “chaos” in trying to implement the policy without the required proficiency and language teaching skills, saying the priority should be the quality of education.

Minister Cheng also pointed to the “108 Curriculum Observation Report” issued on 22 May by EdYouth, a group composed of students, which described the bilingual policy as “excellent” but noted that high school students generally believed the disadvantaged were not properly supported by the bilingual policy. EdYouth recommended a delay in implementing the policy.

Cheng acknowledged that culturally or economically disadvantaged families would need support and said he would look into using universities’ social responsibility programmes to encourage students to serve in primary and secondary schools during vacations, bringing talent and resources to rural areas of Taiwan.

Implementation in universities

Huang pointed to practical problems in the universities selected by the government to implement the bilingual policy. “The teaching pace of EMI may be slower and could cover less content than the Chinese medium instruction courses,” she said.

She noted that in interviews with university faculty during her research “the interviewees question the purpose of EMI, they think it’s not really clear whether it's for enhancing Taiwanese students’ English proficiency or more for recruiting international students”.

They argued, for example, that “if it’s for local students, then many of our students stay in Taiwan after graduation so why would they take the EMI courses?” They also pointed to Taiwan’s national professional exams for graduates of different disciplines like doctors, accountants, and some public servants.

“These exams are taken in Chinese so why would the students be motivated to learn subject knowledge in English?” Huang asked.

She added that some universities in Taiwan recruited project-based assistant professors to deliver EMI. “These professors are focusing on teaching EMI courses, and it may mean that tenured faculty members have less motivation for teaching in English even though they (the government) provide a lot of incentives,” she said.

Cheng stressed, however, that the bilingual policy was not being abandoned. When he was president of Sun Yat-sen university he had pushed a plan to have all teaching in English at the university within ten years, noting the global reach of Taiwan’s industries and the need for international professional talent.

He underlined that language proficiency is a tool to promote Taiwan’s industry and academia. Teaching in English would also help recruit foreign students at a time when Taiwan is facing demographic decline, and help expand the island’s industrial talent base, Cheng said.

He noted that 80% of Taiwan’s industries – including its world-beating semiconductor industry – exported to 20-30 countries and that most of them work in English.

Limited impact of slowdown

Huang believes a slowdown would not have a practical impact for the universities in Taiwan that are currently implementing it with extra resources already provided by the government. The slowdown would likely come into effect in future, she said.

Universities teaching in English are some of Taiwan’s top ranked universities which have a number of international faculty members. “They have already established English-teaching foundations in the past four years, so they could just continue English teaching with less resources,” she said.

Huang believes international students would still come to Taiwan even if universities have less resources. For private universities or the universities of technology that need to recruit internationally, most of these students come from Southeast or South Asian countries, which may not be impacted.

“But if they want to explore the markets for international students, like the US or other English-speaking countries, then maybe it will have some impact,” she said.