Taiwan Today

The education system aims to nurture lifelong movers as well as future Olympic stars.

Across Taiwan’s academic landscape, sports now receive recognition as a valid career path quite apart from their inherent health benefits. They are recognized as a branch of soft power that can raise the country’s profile on the international stage, and education reform has been implemented to both nurture future professional athletes and create a healthier general population. As Taiwan emerged as an economic powerhouse in the 1980s, the Ministry of Education (MOE) zeroed in on competitive sports, recognizing that the subject could supplement academic rigor to produce well-rounded graduates. Pan Yi-hsiang (潘義祥), former National Taiwan Sports University (NTSU) professor and honorary chair of the Taiwan Sports Education Association, has tracked this arc. “When I began teaching in the 1970s, P.E. [physical education] was an afterthought. It was just pushups and running laps with no clear purpose,” he recalled. “It was often skipped for extra math, but today there is a recognition that it yields great health outcomes.” Pan’s career, capped by a role as advisory member for the MOE’s health and physical education curriculum, offers a panoramic view of Taiwan’s cultural shift on the topic from schools with basic open spaces and borrowed gear to a system poised to produce a new crop of world-class athletes.

Strong Start
Under the 2009 version of the MOE’s 12-year compulsory education program, there are mandated goals for physical education from elementary school to university. At the elementary school level, these include motor control in running and jumping in addition to cultivating an ability to listen and absorb rules, maintain a friendly attitude and be aware of safety issues. One of the most important additions to the curriculum was swimming lessons for the higher elementary grades. Before 1989 there was little public access to beaches and no significant culture of water sports or water safety. Junior and senior high schools have the same two mandated 40-minute periods each week for sports and fitness, and the general goals of understanding rules, developing personal skills, participating actively and demonstrating good social behavior are similar to the aims of primary school classes.

In addition to P.E. at all levels of education, students with an aptitude for sports can be streamed into specialized elementary and junior high school programs to receive additional coaching and classes in sports like baseball, basketball, dance and swimming. Depending on performance, students can continue this specialization into senior high schools and universities on their path to becoming professional athletes.

Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Junior High School (ZSJH) is one educational institution with a focused track for physical education. “We design activities that teach coordination through play. Movement is our mission,” said Lu Kun-hung (盧坤宏), the school’s sports department director. At ZSJH, P.E. involves athletic competitions, with each grade diving deep into a different sport, including badminton, table tennis, volleyball and sprinting. Classes in the same grade compete with each other to foster teamwork and balance camaraderie with rivalry. The school’s P.E. department sends its teachers to physical education forums to encourage them to take inspiration from their peers around the country and strategizes fun, creative ways to integrate new MOE curriculum guidelines, such as adding English-language elements to classes.

Future Professionals
To act as a further catalyst for potential pros, the MOE’s Sports Administration (SA), with support from city and county governments, organizes the National High School Games (NHSG) for junior and senior high school students in a different city each April. The event includes 15 sports, among them archery, gymnastics, judo, soccer, swimming, table tennis and wrestling. At the college level, the National Intercollegiate Athletic Games showcase future professional athletes drawn from university P.E. programs around the country. Like the NHSG, it is organized by the SA and moves to a different host city every year. The event often springboards young athletes into Olympic training.

At the general tertiary level, sports are compulsory for all undergraduate students, who must pass modules in the subject to graduate. The success of specialized P.E. streams at the primary and secondary level is evidenced by Taiwan’s 16 public and two private universities with physical education departments. One of the country’s most prestigious schools, National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, has been training P.E. teachers since 1946. As part of the institution’s transition to a comprehensive university, the College of Sports and Recreation was established in August 2001 to encompass not only pedagogy but also biomechanics, exercise physiology, injury prevention and recovery strategies, and sports psychology.

In a similar vein, the P.E. department was later renamed the Department of Physical Education and Sport Science (PESS) and also incorporated elements of sports science from the humanities and natural sciences. “We strike a balance between theoretical knowledge and practical application,” said PESS Chair Chang Yu-kai (張育愷‬). The department’s graduating class of 2023 saw 99 students complete their undergraduate degrees and prepare to enter the sports industry and schools across Taiwan as enthusiastic, expert professionals. “We train teachers to make sports a lasting part of students’ lives,” Chang said, emphasizing that pedagogy focuses on broad competence rather than elite performance to ensure that students of all skill levels are nurtured in school. Graduates leave with both specialized expertise in a chosen field and an understanding of P.E.’s broader role in society.

Taiwan’s sports revolution extends beyond classroom walls. The MOE’s Sports Industry Development Plan, launched in 2018, has sparked significant community involvement. Nearly all cities and counties in Taiwan have public sports centers, and as of 2023 the SA had invested approximately NT$3 billion (US$900 million) in the construction of additional centers for smaller administrative districts through a program for enhancing the national sports environment. They are all expected to be completed by the end of 2025, ensuring easy access to sports to keep all of Taiwan’s people healthy and active.

Write to Krakias Kai at kwhuang@mofa.gov.tw