TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Ministry of Education expects the number of Taiwan’s public high schools offering completely English-taught courses will increase by almost 25% in 2023.

The Ministry of Education said Friday (Feb. 17) that it will offer more subsidies, training, teaching materials, and new English language examination software to achieve the goal of 257 high schools offering completely English taught courses.

“Through promoting … practical methods of teaching in English we will enhance the professional knowledge of Teachers offering the English taught courses,” the ministry said.

The Ministry of Education said the increase in resources for English taught courses will help it achieve the National Development Council goal of a bilingual Taiwan by 2030.

Some critics of this policy have pointed out that even with a British colonial past, Singapore took 20 years to establish English bilingual policy, making the 2030 goal appear overly ambitious. In addition, minority languages, including Taiwan’s Indigenous languages, are in a serious state of decline, despite the government passing the Indigenous Languages Development Act in 2017.

A 2018 study ranked Taiwan’s English proficiency as low, with the top-ranking Asian countries being Singapore, followed by the Philippines, Malaysia, India, and Hong Kong, all five of which were colonized by English-speaking countries.

(Dark blue) regions where English is a majority native language. (Light blue) regions where English is officially or widely spoken, but not a majority native language. (Wikipedia commons image)