The Education Ministry released a statistical report on Wednesday indicating that Taiwan’s performance in the United Nations’ (U.N.) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for quality education are better than the world average.
The U.N. SDGs consist of 17 goals that make up the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. World leaders agreed upon the agenda in 2015 to “secure the rights and well-being of everyone on a healthy, thriving planet.” The educational goal of the SDGs is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. The goal is then further broken down into several targets.
For the school completion rate target, which refers to the proportion of those who have completed the different levels of education, Taiwan reflected a 99.98% completion rate for elementary schools, 99.66% for junior high schools, and 98.67% for senior high schools. All of these are much higher than the world average of 86.90% for elementary schools, 76.60% for junior high schools and 57.60% for senior high schools.
The overage rate measures the percentage of students who are older than the expected age for their grade. Taiwan's overage rate for elementary school students is 0.01%, much lower than the world average of 9.80%, while the rate for primary school students was 0.05%, compared to the world average of 10.31%.
The target participation rate in organized learning a year before the official primary entry age was 96.64% in Taiwan as Taiwanese people generally send their 5-year-old children to kindergarten. This is also higher than the world average of 71.46%.
Taiwan also showed that it is in line with major countries around the world achieving a 100% rate in providing basic school infrastructure including electricity, basic drinking water, internet, computers, and sanitation facilities, among others.
