Becoming a Teacher: Forty Years of Reform and Collapse in Taiwan's Teacher Training System

30-second overview: On February 7, 1994, the Legislative Yuan passed the Teacher Education Act in its third reading, ending the half-century pipeline of the normal school system and opening teacher education to general universities offering education programs¹. The optimism at the time: more people from diverse backgrounds could enter teaching. Thirty years later, the sobering reality: the original nine education universities went through a wave of mergers, and by 2024 only three remained (National Taipei University of Education, National Tsing Hua University [which absorbed the former Hsinchu Education University], and National Taichung University of Education) — education universities accounted for roughly 95% of all higher education merger cases². In academic year 2020, enrollment shortfalls across all teacher training institutions reached a record high of 1,551 spots³. In February 2018, the Teacher Education Act was substantially amended again, reversing the sequence from "internship first, exam second" to "exam first, internship second"⁴. After the new system took effect, the teacher certification pass rate in 2023 dropped to 51.64% (9,072 sat for the exam, 4,685 passed), the lowest since new-format questions were introduced⁵; in 2024, the pass rate was 52.2% (10,377 registered, 5,022 passed), the second-lowest in four years⁶. Among students who entered teacher training programs between 2011 and 2018, 42% dropped out before completing their internship or obtaining a teaching certificate⁷. A survey by National Taiwan Normal University found that 47% of teacher candidates said they were "unsure whether they'd become teachers but enrolled just in case"⁷. The 1994 reform aimed to solve "homogeneous backgrounds" — but the problem in 2024 is not homogeneity: it is that fewer people want to become teachers, and those who stay are being trained in ways increasingly disconnected from the classroom.

1994: Opening Up — From Single Track to Multi-Track

Before 1994, nearly all elementary school teachers in Taiwan came from normal junior colleges (later redesignated normal colleges, then education universities), while secondary teachers came from normal universities. This "normal school pipeline" had persisted since 1949: the design was clear — the state guaranteed graduates would be assigned to schools, students received government funding, and after fulfilling a service requirement they became regular teachers⁸.

This system allowed Taiwan to rapidly train sufficient teaching staff in the postwar decades. But it also carried a structural problem: teachers came from an overly homogeneous background. Students who entered the normal school system had typically decided by high school that they wanted to teach; the following six or seven years were spent entirely within the normal system, interacting primarily with educational theory and like-minded peers. This uniformity was increasingly questioned from the 1980s onward: should teachers come from more diverse backgrounds? Is a person who has only ever been through the normal system really better suited to teach children than someone who studied engineering, medicine, or literature and then came to teaching?

On February 7, 1994, the Legislative Yuan passed the Teacher Education Act in its third reading¹, formally ending the single-track pipeline. The new system allowed any general university to establish an "education program," enabling students to pursue education credits alongside their primary major, complete an internship, pass the teacher certification exam, and obtain a teaching license¹. Government-funded student quotas were significantly reduced.

On the surface this was an open reform. In substance it transformed one thing from "state guarantee" to "market competition": where normal graduates previously had guaranteed assignments, everyone who wanted to teach now had to find schools themselves, pass certification, and compete for vacancies. The effects of this change were not immediate. They took roughly twenty years to fully materialize.

The Merging of Education Universities

After the 1994 Teacher Education Act, Taiwan's teacher training system was not just internally reformed — its entire physical structure was rewritten.

The clearest indicator is the fate of education universities. In the early 1990s, Taiwan had nine education universities (or their predecessor normal colleges)²:

National Taipei University of Education, Taipei Municipal University of Education, National Hsinchu University of Education, National Taichung University of Education, National Taiwan Normal University, National Tainan University of Education, National Chiayi University of Education, National Taitung University of Education, and National Hualien University of Education.

By 2024, this number had fallen to three²:

• National Taipei University of Education (remained independent)
• National Taichung University of Education (remained independent)
• National Tsing Hua University (former National Hsinchu University of Education was absorbed into Tsing Hua in 2016)

The remaining education universities were progressively merged: Taipei Municipal University of Education merged into Taipei Municipal University in 2013; National Tainan University of Education became part of National University of Tainan; National Chiayi University of Education became part of National Chiayi University; National Taitung University of Education became National Taitung University; National Hualien University of Education merged into National Dong Hwa University². Education universities accounted for roughly 95% of all higher education merger cases in Taiwan².

These mergers were not an active policy choice for education reform — they were the downstream consequence of two compounding forces: declining birth rates and the opening of teacher training. Once teacher education moved from "normal school monopoly" to "any university can run programs," the unique status of normal institutions evaporated; once declining birth rates reduced demand for teachers, normal graduates found fewer career paths; once enrollment numbers fell below a threshold, the university system naturally moved toward mergers or absorption. An open reform, three decades later, had dismantled the entire physical infrastructure of teacher education.

This is not alarmism. If a high school student in 2025 decides "I want to be an elementary school teacher," the pool of universities "dedicated to training elementary teachers" has shrunk to just two (National Taipei University of Education, National Taichung University of Education). That choice pool is more than three-quarters smaller than what their parents' generation had.

Teacher Training Programs That Cannot Fill Their Seats

The second warning sign in Taiwan's teacher training system began in academic year 2010. That year, enrollment shortfalls across all national teacher training institutions appeared at scale for the first time³.

The situation did not improve. According to the Ministry of Education's Teacher Education Statistical Yearbook, every academic year since 2010 has seen enrollment shortfalls, reaching an all-time high of 1,551 spots in academic year 2020³. This means all teacher training institutions nationwide together offered 1,551 more spots than the number of applicants.

This number is easy to misread as "people no longer want to be teachers." The actual situation is more complex. The number of people sitting for civil service examinations in Taiwan has not notably declined, nor has enrollment in medical programs. It is not that young people do not want stable work — they are just unwilling to equate stable work with "becoming a teacher."

A twenty-year-old university student facing a fork in the road can choose "add 26 credits of education coursework + six months of internship + teacher certification exam + working as a substitute teacher if no vacancies exist," or can choose "enter the job market directly or continue to graduate school." The former is a clear but lengthy path; the latter is vague but flexible. Over the past decade, more and more people have chosen the latter.

42% Who Exit Mid-Way

Even students who enter teacher training programs do not necessarily see them through.

According to campus analysis from the Ministry of Education's primary and secondary teacher database, among students who entered teacher training programs between 2011 and 2018, 42% chose to quit before completing their internship or obtaining a teaching certificate⁷.

This 42% is the heaviest number in Taiwan's teacher training system. It means: for every one hundred college students who decide "I want to become a teacher" and begin taking education credits, forty-two stop partway through before they ever hold a teaching certificate.

Why? The answer from teacher candidates surveyed by NTNU was blunt: 47% said "I'm not sure if I'll actually teach, but I'm taking the courses just in case." At NTNU itself, this proportion was 58%⁷. Nearly half of all teacher candidates treat the qualification as a backup plan. Nice to have, not essential.

This psychological posture is itself a side effect of the 1994 reform. Under the old single-track system, entering the normal school was a commitment to teaching; once the system opened up, enrolling in a teacher program became merely "keeping an option open." When a nation's teacher training system has half of its students treating it as a backup plan, it is not training teachers — it is providing insurance.

2018: "Exam First, Internship Second" — Another Rewrite

On February 1, 2018, substantial revisions to the Teacher Education Act took effect⁴. The core of this amendment was reversing the sequence of the "teacher qualification exam" and "education internship."

Old system (applicable to those who obtained teacher candidate status before January 31, 2018):

1. Complete pre-service teacher education coursework
2. Complete education internship
3. Obtain certificate of completion of pre-service teacher education
4. Pass teacher qualification exam
5. Obtain teaching certificate
6. Sit for teacher recruitment examination

New system (applicable to those who obtained teacher candidate status on or after February 1, 2018):

1. Complete pre-service teacher education coursework
2. Obtain certificate of completion of pre-service teacher education
3. Pass teacher qualification exam (exam first)
4. Complete education internship (internship second)
5. Obtain teaching certificate
6. Sit for teacher recruitment examination

The logic of the new system: have teacher candidates first pass the exam to confirm minimum competency, then proceed to internship; avoid the waste of spending half a year on internship only to discover they cannot pass the certification exam⁴. This sounds reasonable. But in practice there was a hidden side effect: it shifted the pressure of the certification exam from "final assessment after internship" to "prerequisite gate before internship," turning what was once part of the training into a "prize for passing the test."

Transitional provisions gave students already in teacher training a ten-year buffer, allowing them to apply the old rules until January 31, 2028⁴. But for students who entered teacher training programs after 2018, the new system is the only path.

Certification Pass Rate Falls to 52%

Six years after the new system took effect, the problems became visible.

2023 teacher qualification exam pass rate: 51.64% (9,072 sat, 4,685 passed)⁵. A drop of more than 10 percentage points from the previous year's 62.03%. United Daily News reported at the time: "New-format certification pass rate hits new low — question design draws criticism."⁵ Education faculty professors publicly questioned the instability of question design, pointing out that teacher candidates who failed the exam could not proceed to internship, potentially forcing career changes or another year of exam preparation, threatening the teacher supply pipeline⁵.

2024 teacher qualification exam pass rate: 52.2% (10,377 registered, 5,022 passed)⁶. The second-lowest in four years. Flipedu's coverage was composed: "5,022 people obtained their internship ticket"⁶. That word "ticket" is precise — under the new system, the certification exam is no longer just a qualification credential; it is the ticket to enter internship. Without the ticket, you cannot even do the internship.

What a 52% pass rate means: for every two university students who have completed four years of teacher training coursework, one is stopped at the final gate. This proportion would seem less striking if it occurred in bar exams or medical licensing — but for a teacher training system that is already suffering enrollment shortfalls, it creates a double squeeze: fewer people want to enter, and half of those who do are stopped by the exam.

The Ministry of Education's public response to the falling pass rate: the certification exam is a "moderate difficulty" criterion-referenced assessment, and the historical pass rate has been around 50 to 60%⁵. Technically not wrong — but it evades a deeper question: when the pass rate dropped from 62% to 51% in the two years immediately after new-format questions were introduced, was the difficulty truly "moderate," or was it a side effect of the policy transition?

Government-Funded Student Provisions: The Final Link to Rural Schools

In February 2024, the Ministry of Education amended the "Regulations Governing Teacher Education Subsidies, Grants, and Assignment Services"⁹. Government-funded students are those who, pursuant to the Teacher Education Act, receive government funding for teacher training and are required upon graduation to serve in remote or special-area schools⁹.

Under the revised regulations:

• Government-funded students receive 4 years of public funding (tuition, dormitory fees, living allowances)⁹
• After graduation, students must serve in remote or special-area schools, with continuous service of no less than 6 years at the assigned school⁹
• During the funding period, students must complete a minimum of 24 credits in professional education or specialized courses⁹
• The restriction on pursuing a degree during the service obligation period is shortened from 4 years to 3 years⁹
• New provisions allow parental leave or military service during leave-without-pay to count as continuous service, but actual service must be no less than 6 years⁹

The significance of this regulation cannot be understood in isolation. Together with Article 5 of the Act for the Development of Education in Remote School Districts (六年介聘限制, the six-year inter-assignment restriction), it forms a complete chain from teacher training to rural service:

1. A college student with ambitions to teach in rural areas enters teacher training through the government-funded track → receives 4 years of public funding
2. Upon graduation, is assigned to a rural school → serves continuously for 6 years under the government-funded student regulations
3. If they were recruited specifically through a remote school district selection → an additional 6 years of inter-assignment restriction applies under Article 5

The combined total: from entering university to being free to leave a rural school, a government-funded student needs a minimum of roughly 10 years. This is the state's contract with teachers willing to go to rural areas: we give you 4 years of public funding, and you owe the next 6 years to remote communities.

But the awkward question in 2024 is: among students newly entering teacher training, how many are willing to take this path? According to a report in Global Views Magazine, when the first "vocational education government-funded teacher program" was launched in 2024, an NTNU professor openly expressed skepticism, saying teacher training attractiveness in the vocational system is even weaker¹⁰. This story concretely illustrates one thing: even with full public funding plus inter-assignment guarantees, the state cannot find enough people to enroll. The problem in 2024 is not "people who go to rural areas running away" — it is "nobody coming in the first place."

91% Satisfied vs. 23% Unsatisfied

The most interesting contradiction lies in quality evaluations.

Results from OECD's TALIS 2018 (Teaching and Learning International Survey): 91% of surveyed Taiwanese teachers said pre-service and in-service training had a positive effect on their teaching, above the TALIS survey average of 82%¹¹. This number sounds good — Taiwan's teacher training is rated more positively than the international average by teachers themselves.

But open NTNU's "Teacher Education Longitudinal Research Database" and the picture reverses: among 1,203 school administrators supervising first-year elementary teachers surveyed nationally in academic year 2019, 23.3% considered the performance of first-year elementary teachers in university teacher training programs to be "unsatisfactory"¹². In other words, nearly one in four administrators directly supervising new teachers evaluated the quality of teacher training as failing to meet requirements.

Why do two surveys of the same system produce opposite conclusions? The difference lies in who was asked and what was asked. TALIS asked all serving teachers, including many who completed teacher training decades ago. Their satisfaction is based on the general impression of "does what I learned back then still serve me today?" The NTNU survey asked current administrators supervising first-year teachers, evaluating "are these young teachers who just started school actually ready?" The former is a nostalgic satisfaction; the latter is an immediate dissatisfaction.

This gap exposes a systemic problem in Taiwan's teacher training: the system is evolving, but the direction of evolution is increasingly divergent from the needs of actual classrooms.

The Three Things First-Year Teachers Lack Most

The NTNU survey in academic year 2017, compiling feedback from 1,000 school administrators and 947 peer teachers, identified the three competencies most needing improvement among first-year teachers¹²:

Competency-based teaching ability (the core of the 2019 curriculum framework, but many teacher training programs still operate on traditional knowledge-transmission pedagogies); differentiated instruction and remedial teaching ability (designing instruction at different levels for students of varying abilities); guidance for students with special needs (inclusive education means every regular classroom now includes students with special needs).

All three competencies happen to be the areas of greatest change in actual classrooms over the past twenty years. The 2019 curriculum framework requires competency-based teaching; inclusive education has been promoted since the 1990s, intensifying in recent years; differentiated instruction is a necessary response to widening learning gaps.

But teacher training curricula have not fully caught up. The reason is not that professors are not committed — it is that Article 7 of the Teacher Education Act grants teacher training universities autonomy over their curricula¹. Teacher training universities may independently plan course content and credit allocation. This autonomy was originally intended to allow different institutions flexibility, but the result has been a loss of horizontal consistency in curriculum design — a student completing an elementary education program at NTNU may learn very different things from a student at National Dong Hwa University or National Pingtung University.

Teach for Taiwan (TFT) mentioned a detail in one of its essays: TFT's six-week intensive training is sometimes criticized as "too short," but in practice it covers classroom-ready competencies comparable to what four years of university teacher training covers¹³. This comment appears hyperbolic on the surface but points to a real problem: if four years of teacher training are not filled with intensive connections to real classrooms, those years do not translate into corresponding capabilities.

A Case Library Dominated by Urban Elite Schools

There is also a structural bias from "the representativeness of field experience."

A key component of teacher training is "inviting practicing teachers to share hands-on experience." These talks, workshops, and case discussions form teacher candidates' first impressions of actual teaching environments. But most of the invited teachers come from elite schools in Taipei and New Taipei City. A surveyed teacher candidate named Qiwen stated directly in a TFT interview: "Teacher training programs bring in practicing teachers to share, or pair you with co-planning teachers — but these teachers are mostly from strong or elite schools in the Taipei area. The experiences are mostly from urban elite schools, not from all types of classrooms."⁷

The consequences of this bias are direct: teacher candidates who graduate and are assigned to rural areas, high-needs schools, or schools serving Indigenous communities are almost entirely unprepared. Because their case library contains none of those environments.

The full-immersion indigenous language instruction described in the article on Taiwan's Indigenous Education and Language Revitalization (台灣原住民族教育與語言復振的交界), the mixed-age instruction and 5:1 student-teacher ratio in the article on the Remote School District Education Development Act (偏遠地區學校教育發展條例全解), the community-engagement methodologies in the article on rural education in Taiwan (台灣偏鄉教育) — all of these are things rural teachers must know, but mainstream teacher training programs almost completely ignore them¹⁴.

What happens? A teacher candidate spends four years preparing, obtains a teaching certificate, is assigned to a tribal elementary school in Laiyuan Township, Pingtung — and discovers that half of what they were trained to do is irrelevant to that setting. They learn on the job, become exhausted after a year or two, and leave, to be replaced by the next unfamiliar new teacher.

This is precisely the case made in TFT's thinkings essay: Taiwan needs a more "customized," rural-context-oriented open and innovative teacher training system¹⁵. Not a complete overhaul of the four-year curriculum — but designing a portion of teacher training tracks specifically for rural contexts, so that teachers with a genuine commitment to rural service can begin accumulating relevant capabilities from their university years. This proposal has scholarly consensus; on the policy front, it is still advancing slowly.

The More Complete the System, the Further from the Classroom

Returning to the contradiction at the start of this article: the 1994 reform was meant to make teacher training more open, pluralistic, and connected to the real world. Thirty years later:

Teacher training tracks multiplied, but cannot fill enrollment (2020 academic year shortfall: 1,551 spots); diverse backgrounds can now enter, but 42% drop out mid-way; curricula enjoy autonomy, but lost horizontal consistency; teachers are satisfied overall with teacher training (91%), but field administrators are dissatisfied with first-year teachers (23.3%); the case library is richer, but biased toward urban elite schools; education universities went from nine to three, even the physical training infrastructure is disappearing; in 2018 another major revision swapped "internship first, exam second" for "exam first, internship second," and after the new system took effect the certification pass rate dropped to 52% — a recent low; in 2024, government-funded student regulations were amended to strengthen the rural pipeline, but even NTNU professors are not optimistic about the vocational teacher government-funded program.

The more complete the system, the further from the classroom. This is not a failed reform — it is a reform whose direction was misaligned with the problem that needed solving. The 1994 reform aimed at solving "homogeneous backgrounds," but the educational challenges of Taiwan in the 2020s are not about homogeneity — they are about the diversity of the classroom exceeding what any single training system can handle. Competency-based curricula, inclusive education, learning gaps, rural teacher shortages, Indigenous education, multicultural families — these challenges cannot be automatically solved by "a more open teacher training system." What is needed is training tracks designed specifically for each type of classroom.

Taiwan is only beginning to discuss this, somewhat late. The Ministry of Education's "rural teacher specialist programs," TFT's two-year plan, and select teacher training universities' "place-based teacher education" experiments are all early attempts in this direction. They remain on the margins, not yet mainstream.

In 2024, a coalition of civil society organizations convened a public hearing with a direct demand: the gaps in the complete teacher training support system must be filled¹⁶. The demands include strengthening rural-context teaching in the teacher training phase, expanding government-funded student programs, reforming certification question design, and evaluating the exam-before-internship sequence. This marks the starting point for teacher training reform as a policy companion to the Remote School District Act — but implementation remains distant.

Becoming a teacher, from the 1994 open reform to the 52% certification pass rate of 2026 — this trajectory has traced a circle. Opening up did not solve the problem, because the problem was never "who can enter." It was "can those who enter cope with what they actually find in the classroom." What the next decade must address is that harder question.

Further Reading

• Teach for Taiwan (TFT) — TFT's "two-year teacher program" is a parallel experiment to the existing teacher training system: six weeks of training + two years in the field + five hundred hours of in-service training, relocating the teacher training environment to rural communities. The Remote School District Act authorizes NGOs to participate; TFT is the largest practitioner.
• Remote School District Education Development Act (偏遠地區學校教育發展條例全解) — Article 5's six-year inter-assignment restriction, Article 7's dedicated teachers, and Article 16's five-party cooperation are all downstream remedies for insufficient teacher training supply. Teacher training and the Act must be read together.
• Taiwan's Indigenous Education and Language Revitalization (台灣原住民族教育與語言復振的交界) — The 1.1% share of Indigenous teachers in the classroom is half attributable to a teacher training system without programs designed for tribal contexts. Figures like Camake Valaule who fill that gap through personal effort are exceptions, not a systemic solution.
• Rural Education in Taiwan (台灣偏鄉教育) — The concentric-circle framework of rural education shows that teacher training is one of the most upstream factors. When the upstream loosens, no amount of downstream remediation is sufficient.
• Education System and Admissions Culture — The culture of exam competition influences how students rank their choices; teacher training has been sliding lower in that order of values in recent years.

References