Preschool

As introduced by the Taiwan Yearbook 2006:

Most parents want their children to get a head start in the highly competitive educational system. However, the majority of kindergartens and nurseries are privately owned and therefore charge high tuition, which is often too heavy a burden for average-income families. Recognizing the widespread desire of parents to send their children to preschool, the MOE has tried to increase the number of public preschools by affiliating them with existing elementary schools, often using the same facilities. Public kindergartens set up by local governments are also encouraged.

According to the MOE, 224,219 children attended 3,351 registered preschools in SY2005. Another 290,218 children attended 4,307 child-care facilities and nursery schools at the end of 2005, with Taipei and Kaohsiung cities having the highest concentration of preschools. In 1983, the MOE formulated the Measures for Encouraging Private Preschool Development to stimulate the growth of well-established preschools.

This changed the preschool system in several ways, by restricting the number of students per class, providing more on-the-job training for teachers, and improving the student-to-teacher ratio (10.27 students to one teacher in SY2005). In 1995, the MOE promulgated the Establishment Standard for Universities and Colleges Offering Teacher Education, which created a regular channel for training preschool teachers. Since September 2000, the government has provided education vouchers worth NT$10,000 (US$299) a year for five-year-olds attending registered private kindergartens and nurseries.