The Executive Yuan approved amendments to the Statute Governing the Retirement of School Faculty May 6 increasing the standards for age and years of service qualifying public school faculty for monthly pensions.
According to the proposed revisions, teachers at public institutions will have to reach the age of 60 and have taught for 25 years, or the age of 55 and have taught for 30 years, before they will be able to collect their pension in monthly installments. This is known colloquially as the “eighty-five system,” after the sum of the age and teaching period requirements.
Under existing law, public school teachers need only to be 50, with 25 years of service, to be eligible for the monthly pension plan, under what is known as the “seventy-five system.” With the proposed change, teachers will have to serve five to 10 years longer.
Chen Kuo-hui, director of the Ministry of Education’s Department of Personnel, stressed that the average retirement age for teachers is now 53.8. If teachers at that age have worked for 30 years, they will be close to the new standard for retirement. Moreover, a 10-year buffer period is included in the proposed changes, so the effect on currently serving teachers will not be serious, he noted.
Chen said the change applies only to those who choose to receive their pensions in monthly installments. There are no changes for teachers who collect a lump sum payment.
The revised bill also eliminates the provision granting five extra units of radix to teachers voluntarily retiring at age 55, as well as the prohibition against those applying for extension of service beyond the age of 65 receiving monthly pension payments.
The MOE admitted that with teachers working longer before retirement, opportunities for unemployed and underemployed teachers may be affected. This problem is also related to the nation’s low birth rate, however, and the purpose of the amendments is to keep teachers from retiring too early.
If the amended bill is passed by the Legislature, it is expected to take effect Feb. 1, 2011. However, in the first ten years a graduated mechanism will be in place by which the sum of the age and teaching period requirements will go up by one point each year.
For example, for retirement after next Feb. 1 the standard will be “seventy-five,” and after Feb. 1, 2011 “seventy-six,” and so on for 10 years. This buffer mechanism will not apply to teachers who are qualified under the current “seventy-five system” before the act takes effect and put in for voluntary retirement. (THN)